Heads Above the Water
by Mariani
Summary: He sloshes ahead, even in the dark; he'll still guide Bucky to the ends of the earth, if that's what it takes. Post "Winter Soldier." M for language and sexual content.
1. Monster

_There are many names in history  
__but none of them are ours._

– Richard Siken, "Little Beasts"

The manhunt is cumbersome and tiring.

They spend the first week camped out in some shitty little motel outside of New York, then a hostel in Austria where all of three people speak English. But however Pierce did it, he covered his tracks well, because Sam and Steve spends weeks digging in the snow for footprints. For something long erased.

Steve doesn't give up.

In Slovakia, a peasant woman with a soiled eyepatch flinches like their words are acid burns. _A red star over his tricep_, _a metal arm_, _a black muzzle_ is met with downturned eyes of grief and the rushed language of fear. There is a blood trail, infinitely long, in his wake, and survivors scatter it like road signs: _WINDING ROAD AHEAD_. _DEAD END_. _DO NOT ENTER_. People in the north know _him_, the Winter Soldier, and the slaughter to his name, but not Bucky.

This would mean that there is no one left in the world who _knows_ Bucky Barnes except Steve – not even Bucky himself. The thought scares Steve more than anything ever has.

* * *

Steve is resilient and relentlessly optimistic; he dodges every deterrent, every discouraging remark, as they cross out dozens of assassination spots on the map and move on to the next. He won't give up – he _can't_ give up – until one night, in Latvia, when they learn that the Winter Soldier burned fourteen people alive in a church.

That night, Steve says they're going home.

After that, Sam can see something's died in his eyes.

* * *

Natasha is as gentle as she can be when they come back, but Steve isn't looking for gentle. What he's looking for is somewhere he can't find. Something Sam nor Natasha, as well-intentioned as they are, could ever give him.

He shuts himself in his room for a week. They leave him alone.

* * *

Stan's surprised at how many visitors they got. Granted, it's not the most _popular_ exhibit in the museum – those restored biplanes and WWII fighter jets take the cake every time – but every day, a whole mess of people flood in. And there are tons of regulars: old ladies chuckling with nostalgia as they tell their burbling, bright-eyed grandkids about how they remember the original "Captain America craze," fathers with their sons making proclamations about how heroic Rogers and his fleet were, teenage girls who were dragged along secretly sighing over the chiseled-jawed photographs, and people far and few in between admiring the original, in-tact uniforms (and thank _God_ no one notices that chinsy replacement they had to give Captain America's mannequin after that bizarre cat burglary a few months ago.)

The politer people nod to Stan and say hi, and once in a while a kid will run up to him and ask for one of the Captain America propaganda pins he keeps in his pocket, which he'll fix onto their shirts as he tells them that he saw the _real live_ Captain America with his _own eyes_ once, yessir, and he looks great for a ninety-five year old, wish some of us coulda been frozen for seventy years.

A lot of kids tell him that Captain America's their hero; one little boy last week, wearing a replica of the leather helmet Rogers always wore into battle, said in a lisping, five-year-old voice, "When I grow up, _I_ wanna fight crime." At that, Stan affectionately ruffled his hair.

The next day, HYDRA headlines blanketed the Internet like ash.

* * *

The young man starts coming in not long after that.

He spends all day floating around the exhibit, rewatching newsreels and rereading the digital posters over and over, and Stan is fascinated at how _interested_ the kid looks. Around closing, he doesn't even react to the announcement over the loudspeaker. It's like he's in a different world.

Stan ambles over to where the man stares up at the mannequins.

"It's closing time, son."

He actually _flinches_, as if pricked by a needle. "Easy," Stan laughs. "Didn't mean to scare ya. But we're closing up. You'll have to come back tomorrow."

He murmurs something.

"Pardon?"

"I – I knew him."

"What's that?"

The man blinks, still looking like he's far away. He points to the Captain American mannequin.

"I knew him," he repeats.

"Oh yeah? How'd you meet?"

The guy frowns. "I don't know."

"I...okay." Stan keeps smiling, trying to be polite. The kids looks tired as all hell.

"It was a long time ago."

"Aw hell." Stan grins. "Couldn't have been that long ago." He's just met with a grim look.

If you perked the kid up a little bit, and cut that hair, Stan swears he'd be a dead ringer for that Sergeant Barnes fella.

* * *

It can't be him, even if it is.

It says that he was born in Indiana, in 1917 – an orphan. It does not tell him how his parents died, or if they just left him behind.

_Friends since early childhood, Barnes and Rogers…_

It's not him. He's looking at the biography of someone else. He tells himself this, and not because it's true – because he needs it to be. Being a monster is what he knows, and he needs to believe that he was not a man who became a monster, but a monster who was born.

Except –

_Your name is James Buchanan Barnes._

They even managed to rip his name out of him.

The _except_ is, he had a place in the world once. Proof stares him in the face. He was a man, and he once raised his gun to shoot monsters like the one he stands as today. He once stood beside Captain America, not before him, a dagger in his hand.

What would James Barnes think of him now? Would he spare him, as Steve tried to? Would he look into his own eyes and see life where dozens of others have seen nothing but their death?

The film strips scare him. It's _him_, with shorter hair and brighter eyes, talking about Steve. Talking _with_ Steve, and Steve is smiling at him and clasping his shoulder, and even he can see that they're best friends. Just like the exhibit tells him. He watches over and over.

_You're my friend._

Steve could say that to him, three-fourths of a century later, when Bucky was poised to kill him. _You're_ my friend. Not _were_.

He remembers: _NO not without you_ –

His voice. Steve's face, compassionate, afraid, and frustrated at the defiance. He pieces it together, and yes. They were. But he doesn't know if they can be.

He has a brand on his collarbone: _Steven Rogers_. That's the name that glows on every exhibit sign, over the picture of the man from the helicarrier. He has to touch it over and over to make sure that it's there, and his fingers spill across the dented skin like braille. Steven Rogers.

HYDRA never bothered to burn it off. They spent years carving him into the Winter Soldier, and still, they left it there. It meant nothing to him up until two weeks ago.

He used to think names were unimportant, until he learned his own.

* * *

The thought persists.

He can't be James Barnes again. Not after what he's done. His real name is the echo of a decorated ghost, and the only name he's ever known is a blood smear in history. Things can't go back the way they were; this he's sure of. The kid from Indiana is dead along the bottom of a Swiss canyon.

But then there's Steve. Steve is dead at the bottom of a goddamn _ocean_ – at least, he was supposed to be. He's doing remarkably well for a ghost.

_I can't be someone who's dead_, Bucky is thinking. But he could. He could be.

* * *

He comes back every day, all day, for weeks.

He never gives Stan a name, and he's not much of a talker, but he listens, endlessly fascinated by all of the Captain America stories Stan has to tell, and manages a smile at the jokes.

"You know what I heard?" Stan tells him one day. "Captain Rogers is living somewhere in New York City _right now_. 'Course they don't say where, but I think that's the damnedest thing. A superhero, living not a thousand miles away." At that, the kid's face lights up like the Fourth of July.

Stan doesn't know it yet, but it'll be nearly a year before they speak again.

* * *

But he _can't_. The thought roars back to life in Pennsylvania; he can't be Bucky. He can't be Steve's friend, and he can't even remember half of what he's supposed to. He remembers the war – anything will blood sticks, but he doesn't remember the sunlight. He doesn't remember going to Coney Island, or all those times he spoke of on the films, saving Steve's ass from the neighborhood punks.

Steve's smile, at that, had an appreciative and nostalgic edge. Bucky had scrambled to find the evidence behind it, and his mind echoed. Empty. Inked out by HYDRA's black pen.

They tried, once. He remembers that. The first time Steve appears in what little memory he has left, he was strapped to a table, not far away from becoming the Winter Soldier. Red Skull knew he was more monster than man the moment he saw Bucky. One monster to another, seeing a familiar face in a gentle, human crowd.

Steve saved him from that. Bucky knows, even now, that he's still trying to.

Finding the brownstone is easy. The whole country knows Captain America's home address. Walking up to it, though, is not.

He stands there on the sidewalk, staring at the door. The city used to comfort him like a mother's arms, but it rejects him now, unfriendly and exotic. It's changed more than he has; he passes by the neighborhood where he and Steve grew up without realizing what it was until three blocks away. People on the street flinch at his long hair and his heavy, tired eyes.

He is not James Barnes anymore.

"You look different without the suit."

The redhead. The one who was with Steve, back on that overpass.

Voice –

_Fearful_ – And the tape cuts out there. Just like the rest of them. His memory is a broken quilt of shaky, wounded sounds.

He doesn't look at her.

"I won't tell you that you don't have to do this, 'cause I get the feeling you've figured that part out already." She comes further up the stairs of the basement unit. "But Steve won't be furious with you if you walk away right now."

She couldn't possibly know that. Bucky's not the one to be in a position of distrust here, but he is anyway. And Natasha sees that.

"Look, Bucky –" The miniscule wince. So unused to be treated like a human. "– if you don't wanna be found, you don't wanna be found."

"What the hell would you know about it?" he asks suddenly, face flashing with a stunning bit of rage. She remains cool before the heat.

"People get lost. You're not the only one."

"Not like this."

"Думая, что ты один, Это худшее одиночество," she says evenly. _Thinking you're alone is the worst loneliness of all._

Glaring, he just looks away.

He's weak. Anyone could see that. If she was selfish, she could knock him out – force him to stay. The pain of losing him once is what gave Steve his first taste for blood; losing him again, when Steve was _so close_, is destroying him.

But, more than the grief of loss, Natasha knows the agony of being unmade.

Bucky's not there in the morning. The clouds over Steve's face are darker than ever.

* * *

A heavy rainstorm hits the city hard.

The power cuts out one night, and Natasha comes up from the downstairs unit to find Steve sleeping on his couch. Not sleeping; he's awake even before she walks in, eyes already trained at the door. Waiting for someone.

Not her, of course.

During the day, he sees homeless people darting under overhangs and ducking into bus shelters, and he thinks of Bucky – dirty and alone. Nowhere to go.

Steve hated rain as a kid. Too many puddles and mud; snow was worse, where slippery sidewalks always had him on his ass.

Bucky loved it, but he was different. Braver and fearless. On the mornings it would rain, Steve could always expect Bucky to knock on his door with an umbrella and a sly smile on his face. After he loses him, Steve finds himself still opening the front door in the morning, expecting Bucky to be waiting for him.

It's like this all week. Weather fit for mourning.

* * *

Four days of rain. When Steve opens his door that night, his hopeless heart kicks the naive thought that it's Bucky. Then he sees.

It _is_ him.

He falls past Steve, into the foyer, dripping and shivering in his paper-thin clothes.

It's Bucky.

Steve fights to say something, or to move away from the still-opened door, where rain is beginning to pour into the house. But Bucky is here, and alive, and shaking hard, and the words won't come.

For so long, Bucky was the one; he always protected Steve. He was the roof over Steve's head.

This time, though, Steve's the one with the umbrella.

* * *

Bucky just stands there for the longest time, without a word, dragging his eyes along the inside of the brownstone. Steve finally manages to shut the door, and by now, Bucky has a left a puddle of rainwater on the linoleum, but it's not like Steve can even _think_ about that.

Buck turns to him, slowly.

"I...I know you."

Steve fights to catch his breath. He does. He does know him.

**to be continued**


	2. The Air After Drowning

_Memory is brutal but precise_.

– Arkaye Kierulf, "Spaces"

There are so many questions, so many things that Steve needs to know. But he knows Bucky – he knows that, after every disaster, nothing will come back together quite the same. Cities can be rebuilt, but no one can ever capture the essence of what it was before. Societies can reform, but the rules will always be different. And it takes time. He can't repair the damage overnight.

* * *

Bucky sinks down on the couch after Steve gets him a blanket and he won't talk, no matter how much Steve coaxes and goads and pleads with him. So Steve crosses the room; Natasha's with Clint on some obscure mission in the Czech Republic – "If I told you what it was, I'd have to kill you," she told him, as humorous as ever – so he passes a message on to their employer that Nat needs to call him back, _ASAP_. Then he calls Sam, in the brownstone two doors down, and shakily tells him that "_He's _– _I've...I found him. No, he _– _well, he found me, really, but he's here. He's _here_, Sam._"

"Now? He's there now. Right now."

"Yeah," Steve affirms with a weak, breathless laugh. "Yeah, he's here now."

"Bullshit." Pause. "I'll be over in three."

"Thanks, Sam." He hangs up.

In the living room, when Steve sits on the recliner next to him, Bucky looks up.

"I don't know why I came here."

But Steve knows, and he lets it lie.

* * *

"So what are you gonna do?" Sam asks him in the kitchen.

Steve glances at the door anxiously. "I don't know. Keep him here, I guess, until he's better. I –"

"Dude," Sam interrupts. "Stop looking. Okay? He's not a baby. He'll be fine."

"I can't help it." Steve meets Sam's eye, raw and pleading, and Sam softens.

"I know, Steve."

* * *

So Steve keeps him there. But it's not like Bucky tries to leave.

He sleeps, mostly, and spends the day in his room – Steve's bedroom – alone. Steve aches to tell him _everything_, but he knows he can't risk pushing Bucky too early, not when everything is still raw and bleeding. And _God_, he knows how hard it is, being in a place where nothing is the same. How there's just _too much_.

The first time the screaming starts, Steve shoots straight off of the couch and up the stairs almost by instinct, leading Bucky out of the nightmare with gentle hands and a strong, reassuring voice. He's sweating, and terrified, but Steve is the stationary point in the room, and he brings it together like a vital stitch.

The second time, though, Bucky's the one out of bed first, coasting through the hall and falling down the stairs. When Steve can finally shake him awake, he blurts out, eyes huge, "I th-thought. Someone – someone was chasing – me." Steve feels his heart break, and spends the night dreaming of HYDRA, and how he kills each of them, slowly, for what they did to his best friend.

It isn't the first time. When Bucky fell off the train, Steve would deliberately drop beer tankards and teacups and imagines Schmidt's body, smashing to pieces on the ground.

The third time, Steve almost doesn't get up, but he can't _help it_ – Buck sounds like it _hurts_, screaming like a child does for a parent.

"I want if off," Bucky is moaning when Steve opens the door. "Oh _God_, I want it _off_."

The arm. He means the arm. He clutches it like it's a knife in his flesh. It comes together against his body unevenly and jaggedly, in a railroaded crosshatch of scarred flesh. Steve imagines it hurts more than anything.

This continues, every night, until Steve sleeps in the spare bedroom next to Bucky. Sometimes, on the nights he can't sleep, he sits up in the chair in the corner, waiting for it to begin. Feeling horribly inferior.

His job is saving people, and he can't even do that for his best friend.

* * *

After a few days, Bucky starts roaming the house. The prosthesis looks menacing as it glares out in the sunlight, but Steve knows he can't hate it, or long for it to be gone. He knows it's a part of Bucky the way a scar is the part of a prisoner of war.

With SHIELD officially in the gutter and Fury and Coulson in the wind, Steve spends as much time as he can at home. Sam visits twice a day – during his lunch break and after work – bringing coffee and pastries and sandwiches from the corner shop down the block from the VA. Steve mostly eats them, but eventually Bucky tries to.

One day, during an actual lunch they share at Steve's dining room table, Bucky drinks from the cup Sam brought home and makes a face like he swallowed ammonia. "What _is_ this?"

"Coke," Steve replies, hiding a knowing smile behind his hand. "Why?"

"It's disgusting," Bucky remarks. He looks up and catches Steve's eye. "Have I always hated it?"

"Always."

"And you let me drink it?"

Steve doesn't answer, and after a minute, Bucky actually _laughs_, making Steve dissolve. He lives for these little moments – these little glimpses at his best friend as he was. That he might just be getting somewhere.

Two weeks after Bucky shows up, Natasha calls Steve back.

* * *

"Wow, Rogers. He didn't even ask you to show him how all of your fancy gadgets work." Even over the phone, Steve hears that tiny astrophe at the crook of her mouth. "He's already ahead of you."

"Oh, shut up. I caught on pretty quickly."

At that, she laughs.

"Natasha," he groans, "I called because I need your advice on what to do. Sam's no help."

"Up to you, Steve. I've never had a friend of mine hypnotized then show up on my doorstep, suddenly okay again. Y'know?"

He smiles. "I know." Then, remembering that they're in the Czech Republic, he thinks of something. "Hey – you two wouldn't happen to be in _Budapest_ would you?"

Natasha spits out a half-hearted "Fuck you," and Steve laughs before hanging up. Guess he got his answer.

When he swivels in his chair, Bucky's standing in the doorway.

"Hey, buddy."

Bucky clears his throat. "Was that...the woman? From earlier?"

"Yeah. Natasha." Buck continues staring at him, and Steve smiles a little. "What is it?"

"I remember falling off that train."

Steve's heart plummets.

"Wh...what?"

Bucky keeps his gaze fixed on Steve. "I do. I remember waking up in the ice, and getting dragged up the mountain. That's how I lost my arm." The look on his face is enough to make anyone's blood run cold. "Every time I remembered anything, they'd try to erase it. But they never got that."

"Is that what you dream about?" Steve isn't sure what makes him ask – but he's dying to know.

"Sometimes," Bucky says. It goes silent again, for a long while, and Steve, aware of the thin of a razor he's perched on, has to choke down anything he wants to say; he _needs_ to know Buck is ready, even if the progress he's made in the last minute is more than he's made in _weeks_.

An eternity. Finally, Bucky adds, "I think about the people I killed."

An invisible hand clamps down on Steve's throat, because that is the _worst_ possible answer.

"I think about –" He pauses, drawing in an unsteady breath. "About what they made me do."

"Don't do that to yourself, Buck."

"I'm sorry," he whispers; in the light of the desk lamp, Steve sees Bucky's eyes start to shine as he fiercely trains them to the floor. "But it's all I have. It's all I have left to think about."

"Stop," Steve pleads, because he knows Bucky is about to cry. He hasn't hugged his friend in so long, and it's not a happy embrace they share as he crosses the room. It's necessary, the way the burn of antiseptic is necessary for a raw wound, and Bucky feels _broken_ as Steve's arms close around him, in pieces – his body the ash that's sprinkled over a grave.

He clings to Steve like he's a buoy in the waves, until the storm passes.

* * *

After Bucky falls asleep, Steve calls Natasha back, and it's Clint who answers this time.

"I need a favor."

"Anything," Clint says.

"What do you know about HYDRA?"

* * *

It stops getting better, and starts getting rough. Some nights, Bucky has three or four nightmares; once, when he wakes up, his prosthetic arm snaps out and nearly crushes Steve's throat before Bucky rips away, the look on his face echoing the same horrified recognition on the helicarrier.

Sometimes, during the day, Steve will be trying to talk to him and all at once Bucky's eyes will slip away, like a lake that freezes over. He grabs a knife out of the block one day and pins Steve to the floor with it, crying because the war in his mind refuses to subside. A few days later, he punches Steve so hard across the face that he needs stitches beneath his eye. Sam tries to tell Bucky to _stay_ when they're leaving for the hospital, and Steve, his cheek swelling, snaps, "_Christ_, Sam, he's not a _dog_."

"He punched you in the goddamn face, Rogers. Today, he gets to be a dog."

What Sam doesn't know, or forgets in the moment, is that Bucky has spent so long being someone's pet.

Bucky tells him, "I'm not who you think I am," but Steve won't listen. He sloshes ahead, even in the dark; he goes from bearing some of Bucky's weight to all of it, and he'll still guide him to the ends of the earth, if that's what it takes.

* * *

Things were different back in the thirties and forties. Steve's noticed this; of all the things that have changed, the distance between people has gotten greater than ever. Intimacy is a bud that was nipped, and is slowly dying. Growing up, the neighbors used to say "I love you" in the halls, and friends would hug and hold hands and kiss one another on the cheek. When he started staying with Bucky, they would share a pillow fort on the floor of the small living room and stay up until daylight. They slept in the same bed for years, and it was a small bed – even smaller with two.

Steve had frequent colds as a kid, and it never stopped Bucky. Never drove him away. Even during the Depression, he wouldn't eat whenever Steve got sick, letting him have two helpings of leek soup and sneaking scraps of bread he foraged from school. After he got taller than Steve, he started wrapping his body around him whenever he felt him shivering in the unforgiving New York winters.

Bucky closes himself off now, firmly, every time Steve insists that he just come upstairs. _It's safer with two_, he says, praying Bucky will remember who said – he did, those cold nights on the front when even Captain America shivered – and the old grin slides into place, and it's so beautiful Steve could _cry_.

Except the answer is still no.

He knows why, even if he won't press it. He sees the fear in Bucky's eyes and how tightly he clamps down on his prosthesis and how the metal _whines_. How the stitches give way to a small scar and Bucky is terrified of himself.

The night he finally shakily, brokenly crawls under the covers with Steve – the night he actually screams for him by name into the dark – there is no nostalgia for old times, like Steve is expecting. Just the overwhelming relief that Bucky is finally letting him in.

After forever, because he knows Steve is awake, Bucky goes, "I remember when I was the big spoon." And it sounds like he's smiling.

Thank God.

* * *

Before they lost each other, Bucky suggested they switch dogtags.

"To really fuck with Phillips," was his justification, with the usual, shit-eating grin. And of course, Steve couldn't say no.

Philips didn't find it particularly funny when they'd answer to each other's names – they happened to find it _hilarious_ – but when Steve woke up, he wasn't laughing when his hand flew to his neck and those cold metal tags were all he had left beside the shield. The only anchors to his life before.

They'd been frozen against his skin, and he'd had to rip them off; _James Barnes_ was tattooed in small capital letters down his clavicle. Above his heart.

One night, while Buck's sleeping, after the nightmares become less frequent, Steve rolls over and checks Bucky's neck, and sees the scar stamped across his collarbone. _Steven Rogers_.

The tags, of course, are gone, but it hardly matters.

* * *

Natasha comes back after another month and stops by the first chance she gets; Steve is amazed at how easily she makes small talk, even with Bucky resting like a corpse in the recliner across from them. Then, turning to him, she says something in Russian that makes him smile and he actually _talks back_, and the first flutter of hope in weeks stirs in Steve's heart.

"Try to get him out of the house," she tells him after. "Get him to talk to people. He won't get better being holed up in here, even if it's with you."

"What'd you say to him?"

She smirks. "That I'm gonna cut his hair the next time I come by here."

Steve laughs.

* * *

Picking through his memory is like digging broken seashells from sand.

He remembers the music, but not the lyrics. Flashes come to him unbidden, and without warning. His eighteenth birthday. Enlisting. A woman named Peggy. Steve Steve Steve. Fragments of a dropped pane of glass. Sometimes, Steve will say or do something that will make Bucky's mouth curl up without him really knowing why, then he'll realize (_seven years old; a snowman in the middle of the street; "Bucky did you steal those _–" "_Yeah isn't it great"_) and the next day, it'll still be there. And the day after that. Permanence is a raw and scary feeling that he struggles to reconcile.

It isn't easy. He's looking through records without labels, sorting through files that no one bothered to date. He asks Steve a lot of questions, almost to what feels like excess, but Steve is always happy to answer. He's always been patient; Bucky remembers that, too.

Wednesday: "_Steve I don't get why we have to learn this" "It's important, Buck" "It's _stupid" "_You're just saying that because you don't get it"_

_A grin. Eleven years old._

Bucky decides he still hates algebra.

Thursday: _An A minus. Algebra _–

"_You're welcome"_

Steve taught him algebra. Every night, for eight months. Hell was "x"s and trinomials.

Bucky isn't sure of much right now, but thank _God_ Steve Rogers has always been patient.

* * *

Steve takes him out one morning down to a church in Brooklyn, where Sam's veteran and PTSD group meets each week.

Bucky picks the furthest chair from the podium and ducks his head, until they start to speak. These are the words that he recognizes – broken echoes of the sea, through those broken seashells. Men and women spend two hours talking about flashing back to _it_ – their own personal it, not his – over and over, and how, of all the things they forgot, _why couldn't it be that_, and they do it so _calmly_. They're not _okay_ with it, but they're also not afraid.

These people have killed people, like him. Have done things they regret, and things that haunt them, sometimes every night. They all have holes torn from their memories. One man, in his sixties, talks about Laotian girls he killed during Vietnam; they were as young as seven years old. Sam talks about his first deployment to Afghanistan; a sniper narrowly missed him as he tried to land his chopper. The bullet had nailed his copilot, Riley, and best friend since grammar school, between the eyes.

No one has two dozen confirmed kills. No one is the Winter Soldier. Bucky feels like he knows them all personally.

After, he can't ask Sam when the next meeting is soon enough.

* * *

Steve wakes him up early a few days later.

"I wanna show you something."

"Something…? Important?"

He rips open the curtains; Bucky groans loudly at the blinding dagger of sunlight. "Extremely."

"Do I _have_ to?" he mutters. Steve wants to say, _You haven't changed a bit_, but it breaks him when he realizes that's not true.

Bucky scrubs an arm across his eyes tiredly, and it takes Steve another three minutes to convince him to get out of bed.

They go downtown, after grabbing a coffee. To the nursing home on Houston.

* * *

Beside him, peering into the room, Bucky's breath hitches. It's all familiar territory for Steve, but Bucky is an exposed nerve.

"Is – is that…?"

Steve nods.

Bucky swallows.

"Hey," Steve says, softly taking his shoulder. "It's okay if you're not ready."

Bucky manages a smile. "I faced you, didn't I?"

What he means is that he's not weak. Not anymore. So Steve opens the door.

She sleeps, soundly; Bucky's eyes immediately go to the pictures on the bureau. The pictures of herself with her children and husband – none with Steve. The lived she lived, that they never got, wasting away in ice.

He looks haunted.

"Peggy," Steve says gently. He strokes her arm. "Peggy –"

Her eyes flutter open.

"Hey," he says, smiling, and she doesn't ask who he is this time. "Hey. Good morning."

"Steve," she says warmly. Bucky sucks in a loud, heavy breath.

"I brought someone to meet you."

"Oh," she laughs, "you shouldn't have. When I'm like this?"

"You're as beautiful as ever," he says, and means it.

Her eyes stay fixed to his face for a moment, before she sees Bucky, moving further into the room.

Steve stands back.

She stares up at Bucky and, for a paralyzing moment, there's no recognition in those dark, old eyes. Bucky tries so hard to look brave, the prosthesis whirring quietly as he crunches it into a fist in his pocket.

Her mouth pulls back into a smile.

"James."

"Hi," Bucky says with remarkable softness. Her trembling hand reaches for him, and he accepts it between his. She doesn't notice the cold metal.

"I – oh. Your hair, it's –"

"Yeah," he laughs. "I know. I haven't had a lot of time to cut it."

"Wh-where have you been?" she asks. Her entire face glows. "Was it you? Did you – did you save Steve?"

Bucky smiles. "Actually, he saved _me_ this time."

Steve watches from the corner, love in his eyes.

* * *

It's not far now. They spend another month drifting out at sea before the current begins to level, and they stop getting bashed against the rocks. Bucky's voice stops screaming out into the night; he starts talking more, and going out during the day. His smile is a ray of sun that burns away the fog.

He doesn't stop sleeping in Steve's bed, and sometimes Steve stays awake until dawn telling him stories. Anything he can think of. They pick through the wreckage – a mosaic finally falling into place. Bucky confesses that he still has nightmares, but that it's not _him_ anymore, in them; he divides himself from the Winter Soldier and tells Sam's group the abridged version, letting the silent understanding in their eyes gently nudge everything together. Steve's never been more proud.

Natasha swings by again, with Clint, and Bucky laughs fully when he sees that she's kept her word, gesturing to a chair in the dining room with a no-nonsense pair of scissors.

Clint's in awe, for a moment – seeing his partner giving the Winter Soldier a haircut must be surreal to watch – before he joins Steve in the living room. Natasha and Bucky talk in Russian the whole time.

Clint talks about their most recent mission, mostly, but Steve can see that he wants to bring up HYDRA, how he dances around its border in his words, and is beyond grateful that he doesn't. Not when Bucky's laughing and everything is so perfect.

After, when he sees Bucky, Steve's heart nearly stops.

"Damn," he remarks.

Bucky cautions him with a sly look. "Don't ruin it."

"I was just gonna say," Steve says, grinning, "that you look awesome."

"I don't know." Bucky runs a hand through his new hair. "I feel...lighter."

Natasha smiles. "You're welcome." Steve could give her the world for this.

They're nearly there. He can see the shore. He just needs to convince Bucky to swim.

**to be continued**


	3. Exit Wounds

_Neither of us, I suppose, would've thought to use that word, love, but by the fact of not looking at each other, and not talking, we understood with clarity beyond language that we were sharing something huge and permanent.  
_Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"

Bucky has the habit of pulling conversations seemingly out of thin air. There'll be a silence at dinner, or a lazy afternoon as the summer heat begins to leak into the jetstream where Steve's laid out across the couch, and Bucky will just start talking like a machine that suddenly came to life. A Monday morning in the shower, when he calls Steve in and tells him about that summer they took care of the upstairs neighbor's cats. A Thursday evening, when he interrupts Steve and tells him about his first month on the front. Nights when Steve will be lying awake, and Bucky will be telling the dark about how he learned to put iodine on a scraped knee when he was eight and dress a wound when he was nine because "Steve was like an aggressive chihuahua without a leash."

Steve trying not to laugh so Bucky will keep talking.

It takes him a while, but he figures it out. Why Bucky likes saying things aloud as soon as they come to mind. He's going through drawers in his room one afternoon, while Bucky's out to lunch with Sam and the support group, when he finds a stack of Post-Its. Pink and yellow and orange notes, all stuck together. He reads one: _ADOPTED._

Another: _DAD DIED, MOM CLOSE TO IT; STEVE MOVED IN._

_107TH, SERGEANT._

They're all like that. Little snippets and notes about Bucky, about Steve – about their life. There's dozens of them, in Bucky's all-cap handwriting. A few of them are in Russian, scribbled in Sharpie; a couple have been crossed out, or written over.

_DON'T FORGET_ screams one. Another says _STEVE_, and that's all. Like an incomplete thought.

_JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES. 1917, INDIANA_ sits firmly on top.

Steve thinks it's sweet, until he understands what the notes really mean.

Bucky's still afraid. It's been months, and he still thinks that, any minute, HYDRA will push him down into that chair and take everything away.

* * *

Steve learns remarkably quickly. Things are happy, finally, with the two of them settling into a normal routine, but they're still on a thin rope that continually quivers and threatens to give.

Bucky constantly flinches. He's on-edge a lot, especially in public, and winces every time Steve tries to reach out a comforting hand. After spending so long constantly anticipating a slap, Bucky seems both threatened and almost _confused_ by gentleness, so Steve backs off. As much as his hands ache sometimes to reach out, he lets Bucky come to him.

It takes forever, but finally, he does.

Bucky goes around shirtless a lot; in public, he wears short sleeves as much as possible, too. He _owns_ his metal arm, and tells anyone who asks that he got it in war. But, one morning, when he walks into the kitchen after a shower, jeans on, he's touching the red, mottled scar tissue where his prosthesis extends from his skin.

Steve looks up from the bacon sizzling on the stove. "Something wrong?"

Bucky rubs his shoulder. "No, it just – hurts sometimes."

"How often is 'sometimes'?"

Bucky shrugs, and even that makes his face scrunch up.

"Can I see?" Steve asks, feeling a little pathetic for still hoping. Until Bucky actually nods.

When he lays a hand on Bucky's bare back, there's no flinch. No resistance. Even when he moves toward the place where the metal and skin meet. Nothing at all.

"You're tense," he announces, because that's still true. Silently, he prays _Not because of me._

"Sorry," Bucky says.

"Here." Steve rolls his hands against the stiff shoulder blade, until it drops completely. "I think if you just relaxed a little bit, it'd hurt less.

Bucky doesn't respond, but Steve doesn't worry. When they were younger, he used to love getting the space between his shoulders rubbed. On the front – not that Bucky would ever ask for it out loud – Steve would knead the kinks of war from his back.

"Better?"

"_Much_," Bucky says. He groans. "Shit, it was that easy?"

Steve grins, thrilled. "You'd be amazed."

* * *

One of Natasha's new aliases takes the form of a humbled Midwestern girl who works part-time at the Italian deli a few blocks over.

Steve and Bucky, and sometimes Sam, visit nearly every day. Steve makes a big deal about calling her "Tiffany" in a loud, obnoxious voice, and Bucky will say something in Russian to her from across the shop that'll make confused heads turn and Natasha laugh.

Sam tries to hit on her, unsuccessfully, though she's nice enough to banter with him and smile at his lame one-liners. Steve's impressed.

He takes all of them to visit Peggy when summer hits; tearfully, she says, "I'm so _proud_ of you, Steve." At that, Bucky bumps Steve's shoulder with his, smiling softly. Steve smiles back.

Nat moves into the apartment right above the shop, so she comes by after work to check how they're doing – every day for the first week, then less and less, letting him know in her own way that things look good. Sam starts walking Bucky home from their support group meetings, too, and they always walk in talking loudly and laughing.

Steve can't believe how _good_ they are to him.

One afternoon, Natasha comes by with Clint and they teach Bucky how to cook. Or try to, at least. Halfway through, Steve runs in when he hears yelling, then loses it when he sees Bucky using the metal fingers of his prosthesis as a spatula.

"_It's quicker this way_," he's yelling over both of them, forehead knit in concentration. Steve can barely breathe, he's so happy.

They've reached land.

* * *

Bucky loves modern music. Thanks to Clint and Sam, he has a pair of headphones in whenever he goes out – he goes to a gym in SoHo three times a week now, too – and sometimes Steve will walk in on him dancing, or singing to himself. He's always had a good voice, so it's not like Steve or the neighbors through the paper-thin walls mind – always the first to volunteer for solos and standing in the front row of the school choir. Steve wasn't bad himself, either, but he was meek when it came to one thing – public performances – and often hid between the shoulders and arms of the taller kids.

One morning, when Bucky's belting "Something I Need" in the shower, Steve joins him from the next room, though it quickly becomes the two of them mocking each other and slipping into ridiculous falsettos.

At the end, after the last sustained "_If we only die once, I wanna live with yoooou_," Bucky laughs so hard he starts coughing.

As much as he's right there with Bucky, Steve lets nostalgia overtake him one afternoon in an antique shop. And Bucky has never looked more overjoyed when Steve calls him downstairs and shows him the phonograph, nearly in tact, with a record waiting on the turntable.

"You did not."

Steve just grins; he drops the needle, and scratchy honky tonk music fills the room.

Bucky laughs breathlessly. "Where'd you dig that thing up?" But Steve doesn't answer.

"You know, I never _did_ get that dance with Peggy."

More laughter. What a pretty, refreshing sound.

"You must think I'm disposable, Rogers, if you're just gonna sub me in for your old girlfriend."

Steve just keeps his hand extended, smiling. Bucky looks at him a second more, then shakes his head.

"You're a punk."

"Jerk," Steve replies, and the language is so familiar that the recognition in Bucky's twinkling eyes is practically palpable.

He also takes Steve's hand.

Turns out neither of them can dance to save their own lives, but they still have a hell of a time.

* * *

Steve gets the surprise of his life when Natasha shows up a week later. A surprise with aviators and Starbucks in his hand.

"Stark?"

Tony nods. "Good to see you, too, Cap."

They come in, never ones to ask permission. Steve just sighs and shuts the door.

Wherever Fury is, he passed intelligence onto the both of them. Something new threatening the world. Of course, Tony spends nearly most of the time talking about how he's officially ditched the artificial heart and pushing Steve's buttons, so Steve only manages to pick up half of it from Natasha's relentless patience. A repeat of New York, minus Loki. Great.

"Oh, how could I be so rude?" Tony announces suddenly – as suddenly as he can, anyways. He gestures to the kitchen doorway.

Bucky stands there, hands in his pockets. He's home early.

"Come in," Steve says. "We were just wrapping up." Stark's already up on his feet, ever eager to maintain his dominance over the room.

"Tony Stark," he says, and Steve immediately notices how _woodenly_ Bucky shakes Tony's hand. Tony doesn't, though, tapping Bucky's metal arm. "Nice metal. I have something like that, except it covers my entire body."

Bucky nods, not quite all there.

"Firm handshake," Tony notes, prying Bucky's stiff fingers from him. "You know, you'd probably break every one of my fingers if you shook with your left."

"Probably." Bucky's voice is a gust of wind.

Natasha shoots Steve a look, but he tries to power through it.

After, the minute the door closes behind them, Steve goes to ask, but he doesn't even need to. Bucky's waiting.

The clouds instantly regather when he says, "I killed his parents."

* * *

According to Wikipedia, Howard and Maria Stark died in a car crash.

After calling in a request to Clint, though, Steve finds out the real story. Right there, beneath the autopsy reports in the file, is a grainy picture. The same one that briefly flashed when Zola was taunting him with archive footage – a shadowy figure, with their metallic arm circled in red pen.

The question mark drawn near the Winter Soldier's face disguises what Steve hates that he knows.

* * *

The storm doesn't fully roll back in, but the horizon constantly looms with dark, threatening clouds. Bucky's not swept away by the waves – but he stands too far out for Steve to reach.

The nightmares come back, quieter and scarier than they've ever been. Bucky wakes Steve up with mumbling and murmurs, much like how Steve found him at the HYDRA base, strapped to a table. He twitches and kicks and says, "no don't I don't – no, please no no stop I don't want to," and Steve only nudges him awake once, because Bucky juts straight up off the bed, panting.

Steve isn't sure what's worse: listening to the nightmares as he lets them pass, or having Bucky wake up thinking he's _him_ again, thinking he's crushing someone's life in his hands.

But still, Steve tries hard to unravel the knot that's been tangled in their lives, and it works, for the most part. He starts sneaking notes into the drawer where Bucky keeps them – _It's not your fault_, _They made you do it_, _You're more than that_ – and each morning afterward, Bucky will meet his eyes with a silent, deeply thankful look. He makes an effort to touch Bucky as much as possible, as gently as possible, to let him know that he's worth it. He's worth softness.

Steve can't let them tip over that line again. Not when they were so happy.

"Why do you bother?" Bucky says one night, and it takes Steve a minute to realize it's not a dream talking.

He rolls over to face Bucky, but he's turned away.

"I'll be damned if I let you go through this alone," Steve says unthinkingly, and there it is. That miniscule move; the soft expulsion of air from a chuckle.

Bucky remembers. When he was twelve and Steve was eleven, both of them bloody from a schoolyard fight Bucky had rescued him from.

"_Just give up," Steve had said, panting as Bucky supported him with an arm around his shoulders. "You don't have to do this, Buck."_

"_Shut up," Bucky replied. "I'll be damned if I let you go through this alone."_

When Steve checks the drawer in the morning, it's scribbled down on a note.

_SAVED STEVE'S ASS A LOT. HE ACTED LIKE HE DIDN'T NEED IT._

In that moment, Steve swears they're invincible.

* * *

"What was I like?" Bucky asks that Saturday at lunch.

Steve, honestly, had expected this to be the first question Bucky ever asked. And he has been waiting _forever_ to answer it.

"What were you like?" he ponders. A smile tugs at the seam of his lips. "Uh – annoying. Full of himself. A know-it-all –"

Bucky laughs. "I'd tell you to shut up, but I believe that."

They pause to dig into their food; around them, the restaurant filters with mild, pleasant chatter.

"I remember – this one time, after I took a job at the oiling rig upstate for the summer, I came back and someone had broken your arm."

Steve flicks back to it. The summer of '33. Bucky, sixteen and strong and in the dirtiest pair of overalls in history. Even after he came home, oil and dirt streaked his skin like sweat.

"My folks told me that you took it like a champ, but one look and I knew. I knew it hurt like hell."

"It did," Steve fesses.

Bucky smiles. "You did that a lot, huh?"

"What, bit the bullet? Try all the damn time."

"Stubborn little prick," Bucky says affectionately.

At that, Steve has to laugh, because there's the Bucky he knows again.

"I remember, when you finally told me who, I dragged both of them into an alley." Bucky rubs his forehead. "What were those punks' names again?"

"The Liebermann twins, from the end of the block."

"Yeah – _yeah_." He takes a swallow of water. "Holy shit, I _hated_ those kids."

"They never bothered me again after that, though."

"Yeah," Bucky sighs. "I wish all of them could have been that easy."

"Hey, I survived, didn't I?"

"Still – it could have been better for us. One less thing to deal with, right?"

Steve wants to tell Bucky that it was _good_; hell, it was better than good, that nothing about where they came from – the freezing nights huddled beneath the blankets together, the cold mornings in colder water with Bucky standing over him, teeth chattering and dripping, the days they'd go without eating until Bucky had to sneak something from work just so Steve wouldn't _die_ – needed to change. But Bucky drops it.

"You remember a lot" Steve says, "don't you?"

"About growing up? Bits and pieces still." Bucky pauses, deliberating. He twirls some pasta around his fork. "My real parents died, didn't they?"

"Yeah. Mine, too. You were like my brother growing up."

A devious look spreads on Bucky's face. "I remember you used to be a foot shorter than me, too."

"Now I could kick your ass," Steve warns. "Just saying."

"I know, I know."

The beaming waitress swings by. "How's everything going, guys?"

"Swimmingly." Bucky takes another sip of water. "We're gonna be getting a senior discount for this, right?" She smiles, and he gestures across the table. "I mean, we _are_ both ninety-six years old."

"Very funny," she chides. Steve can barely stop himself from laughing before she swishes away; Bucky gives a wide grin.

* * *

The waitress ends up leaving her number and name on their receipt (for whom, she doesn't specify, but it doesn't really matter.)

Steve laughs when he sees it. Bucky just looks like he's forcing a smile, and doesn't call it; it's Steve, two nights later and thinking "_why the hell not_", who gets to hear a very gruff and very male voice telling him to "hang up if he knows what's good for him."

_That_ makes Bucky laugh.

Every Friday and Saturday night, the two of them stay in and usually watch some trashy horror film, or go downtown. During the week, they eat three – occasionally two – meals a day together and hit up the deli to visit Natasha on Mondays. They go to Central Park for walks on Tuesday nights and eat from street vendors for Sunday brunch and visit the coffee shop at the corner for early morning coffee (Bucky still hates tea.) And it's not that Steve minds, but it starts to scare him, after a while – how little Bucky reaches out. His hands are overlapped, metal to flesh, on their apartment, and Steve, and the sweet relief to nostalgia is beginning to give way to unease. The kind of weariness that comes from a recognition of our own insignificance. Being joined at the hip as children, and even in adulthood, made grandmothers smile and school just a little easier. Being joined at the hip after decades of sleeping under a snowbank – and Bucky, spending fifty years in and out of cryo and having his memory scrubbed raw – is scary and limiting.

But Steve maintain his silence, because Bucky is finally _back_. He lets Steve in, and it's astounding how often he hugs him and lets their skin meet without stumbling backward. As much as he worries, Steve _can't_ break that. He can't risk losing him again.

A few weeks after their lunch at the restaurant, Bucky comes home with another girl's phone number written in blue ink on his arm. Steve brightens when he sees that – according to Sam, a cute brunette's been making eyes at Bucky for close to a month – but Buck lets it wash off of his arm in the shower without even looking at it. Like it's more dirt he needs to scrub off.

When Steve, more than a little worried and _boiling_ with his desire to speak up, comes into the bathroom, Bucky's standing in front of the mirror.

He has the neck of his shirt down and he's reading what's been punched into his skin, as if he never has before.

Steve leaves him alone. Bucky stares at it for the longest time.

* * *

"Hey," Steve says as Bucky comes into the bedroom. His dark hair is still dripping with shower water. "You gonna –"

"Were we ever together?"

Steve doesn't even think about it. "What do you mean?" he asks.

Bucky touches his collarbone – the _Steven Rogers_ dug into his flesh. His eyes are focused on Steve's heart.

"You have one, too."

Steve looks at him, not understanding. After a moment, Bucky deflates.

"Never mind," he says, retreating to the bathroom.

Steve shuts off the light before he can even fathom what any of it meant.

* * *

The next morning, the minute he can, Steve tries to explain.

He pretends it's for Bucky's benefit.

"When I was frozen, I still had your tags on. Hell, after you fell off that train, I told myself I would never take them off."

Bucky smiles.

"The ice froze them into my skin; I had to rip them off when I woke up." Steve pauses. "Hang on."

He goes upstairs to his desk, into the locked drawer; when he comes back, Bucky's tags are in his hand. Completely in tact.

Bucky's eyes widen. "You _kept_ them?"

"I couldn't get rid of them. Here." Steve takes Bucky's hand into his and presses the tags into his open palm. "You should keep them."

Bucky stares at them for a moment, the chain dangling toward the ground. "Think I should wear them?"

"Why not?" Steve laughs.

He points to his imprinted collarbone – exposed with his tank top on. His eyes sparkle like sunlight winking in and out of the waves. "I wouldn't match, though."

"They're _your_ dogtags, Buck. I wore them long enough."

"Obviously, I couldn't have kept yours." Bucky frowns. "Shit, they were probably scrapped in an old HYDRA base somewhere."

"That's okay. I know who I am now."

"And I don't?" he asks, playful.

"Consider them more notes," Steve says with a smile. When Bucky slips them on over his head, they sit like they should: directly over his heart. Just like they used to.

Steve gives a stiff, mock-salute, and Bucky laughs.

"Hey, there's no need for that. I'm just an infantry sergeant. But you," he says, "you're a fucking _captain_."

Steve laughs. "Shut up."

Bucky raises one tag up from where it rests, reading his number as he holds it between his metal fingers.

He looks up, and it's like he's seen the sun, after being asleep for thousands of years.

"Thank you, Steve."

Steve smiles warmly; when Bucky hugs him then, and every time after, he'll feel the cold press of those small, rounded pieces of metal against his skin. Fitting right back over where they permanently marked themselves on his body.

For a moment, it makes him forget. Makes him miss how Bucky lingers for too long.

* * *

Steve tells them he's worried not long after.

"About what?" Natasha asks, sucking the tiny bit of milkshake preserved in the end of her straw. "I thought things were awesome now."

"They are," Steve assures. "Just –"

"Mmm." Natasha hails a passing waiter. "Can I get another one of these?"

"Of course," he replies, swishing away her empty glass. She gives him a coquette-ish look as he walks away.

"That the guy?" Sam asks, and Natasha nods with a secret, knowing smile. Steve decides he'll ask later.

"Look: we used to share a bed," he explains. "It got so damn cold in his parents' apartment sometimes. I started doing it again because I thought it would – make him more comfortable."

"And did it?" asks Sam.

"Yeah." Steve pushes a hand through his hair. "Yeah, definitely."

"But…" Natasha prompts.

"He's changed."

"Steve." She looks like she knows every secret he's ever had. "He's been tortured and lobotomized and frozen. He might not be _completely_ different, but did you honestly expect him to soft of fall back into his old shape? You tell him how things were, and he remembers, but they're only _stories_. Things are bound to have changed."

"No," he says, sharper than normal, "you don't _get it_. I _know_ things are supposed to be different. But – I think he's getting the wrong idea."

Silence; Steve checks their faces for signs of recognition, but they're open. Waiting.

"About us," he squeezes out.

"I –" Natasha's eyes snap suddenly. "Oh." The waiter returns and she's distracted, taking her new shake from him with deliberate slowness.

"Steve," Sam sighs after they're alone again, "I get it. He's making you uncomfortable, but we can't do anything about it. That's up to you."

Steve's skin automatically crawls at how confidently Sam says _uncomfortable_. Because it's just not true; he's not _uncomfortable_ with anything Bucky does.

He's _not_.

"That's not it," he says, doggedly ignoring the look they exchange. "I'm just starting to get worried about his future."

Sam raises his hands. "Can't help you, dude."

"I think it's cute," Natasha remarks, smirking with the red straw perched between her lips. "The way he stares at you like you're the whole universe."

Steve frowns. "Nat, that's not cute. That's codependent."

"Isn't that how you two basically grew up?"

"It doesn't matter. Things are different now. Bucky's never gonna live life if he –"

"Steve," Sam sighs, "don't push him away because you're afraid he might get the wrong idea."

"It's not that," Steve says quickly, weirdly indignant and resentful at Sam for even _suggesting_ it. "Not at _all_."

Sam and Natasha share another knowing glance that stokes the fire suddenly alive in Steve's head.

"_What?_"

"You saved this guy's entire life," Natasha says. "Okay? Think about that for a second. And now you're sleeping in the same bed? I mean, I know you're ninety-six years old, but come _on_, Rogers."

He rolls his eyes.

"Look," Sam cuts in, sensing the tension, "you've obviously known the guy longer than we have. So maybe we're wrong."

It's pretty lame, as far as denial goes, but Steve will take it. He'll take anything at all.

* * *

Steve is finally starting to feel older than thirty when he says to Bucky, "Have you found a girlfriend yet?"

They're in line at a food stand in Central Park, and it's definitely _not_ the place Steve wants to do it. But he loses his nerve; at least half a dozen girls more than pretty enough to be on Bucky's radar float by, and he doesn't even notice. Three days ago, a woman walked up to them in the coffee shop and asked him for the time – and that wasn't all she was asking for – and Bucky responded with a flat, iron-like, "8:03."

This is a panicked, juvenile move at best, because it shouldn't even _concern_ Steve.

"No," Bucky says, sniffing. "To be honest, not too many have come up to scratch, if you know what I mean."

Steve _has_ to laugh at that. "Please, Buck. You haven't lost your charm just because you're ninety-six years old."

Bucky smirks. "How sweet of you." They reach the front of the line, and he says, "One avocado club, please," to the woman working the stand.

"I'm just saying," Steve says, chagrined by Bucky's dogged avoidance, "I don't want you to be alone."

When the woman hands Bucky's change back, the coins clank loudly against his metal fingers, startling her.

"Sorry," he says, smiling politely. "Lost something in the war." She nods as if she understands.

Steve pushes down on the tab of his Coke can and goes on, as if Bucky's actually still listening. "It's a big world out there. And Sam told me about that girl at the gym. Did you try to call her?"

"Eh." Bucky shrugs disaffectedly, focusing on his sandwich. "Nah. Not really my type."

"Funny," Steve cracks, "used to be _everything_ was your type."

"Asshole," Bucky laughs.

Steve matches his grin as they move toward the railing sealing off the lake. "I mean that as a compliment; unlike me, you didn't _need_ a serum to get girls to notice you."

"Neither did you," Bucky returns, eating half the sandwich in one bite. He dabs the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. "If you'd actually _talked_ to a girl for a change."

"Suit yourself." Steve takes a long swallow of Coke. "Anyways," he continues, "what I'm trying to say is, I don't want you closing yourself off like I did. I thought my baggage was poison, until I found people who were willing to listen."

"You're willing to listen," Bucky says mildly.

"Well – yeah." Another drink of Coke. The can feels dangerously light already, but is there even anything he can _say_ to that?

"Where's this coming from? Am I getting on your nerves by being around so much?" Bucky asks, only half-joking.

"No," Steve says, "not at all. I'm – shit." He laughs. "I'm so sorry. Nat does this to me all the time and I hate it."

"What, tries to hook you up?"

"Something like that. But, I mean...I don't know." Steve pushes back from the railing and runs a hand through his hair. "After everything that's happened, I'm still not really relationship material these days. You know?"

"Tell me about it."

A pair of cute girls walk past, laughing and talking; Bucky's eyes stay firmly affixed to Steve.

"It's like I told her," he continues as he looks out at the water. "Kinda –"

He chokes something back suddenly.

"Kinda what?" Bucky prompts, distracted by a breeze that blows a napkin out of his hand.

Steve clears his throat. "Oh. Nothing. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there for a second."

"Your memory's starting to go, old man."

"My back," Steve moans dramatically, affecting his best old-geezer hunch; Bucky laughs joyfully, and Steve shoves him. "C'mon, jerk – let's take a walk."

What Steve never tells him is what he said to Natasha once: _kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience._

Because that's just not true anymore.

* * *

On Friday, Steve invites Natasha and Sam over for drinks, and Bucky finally caves and goes out to see a movie with a girl Nat sets him up with.

Steve feels bad for basically forcing Bucky to go, but only slightly. He knows the woman; she's cute and funny and has the mouth of a sailor. Buck's gonna love her.

He comes home an hour later, his anger staining his face like a dye.

The prosthesis whines noisily as he stomps up the stairs and the slam of a door answers Sam's tipsy, "So how'd it _gooo_?"

"Like shit?" Natasha offers. Sam smiles.

Steve looks up the stairs a moment longer before they call him back in.

He can't get drunk anymore, but it gets fun deceiving them into believing that he can after they have six empty beer bottles between the two of them. Sam challenges him to a drinking game and nearly falls out of his chair after Steve sucks down twelve shots without so much as a flinch. Natasha's tolerance is a lot lower than Steve expected – and how fascinating it is to see the composed and stoic Black Widow unravel to the giggling woman at the bar with with the margarita umbrella behind her ear like a blossom.

No one has to drive home, so they keep slamming the liquor back until well past two.

"Hey," Natasha hiccups at one point, "how come he came back so early, y'think?"

"Who?" Sam asks.

"Bucky," Steve responds for her. He checks the clock. "You guys should head back home soon. Unless you want me to carry you."

Sam plunks his bottle, half-finished, back down onto the table. "I'll make it, thanks."

"Same."

"Hey." Sam laughs suddenly. "I don't think he liked your friend, Tasha."

"No," she replies, laughing like that's the funniest thing she's ever heard. "Ohh _man_ she's gonna _hate_ me tomorrow."

"It _is_ tomorrow," Steve says, and they howl at that. He rolls his eyes, smiling.

Then Sam bursts again, and Steve can't stop him.

"Guess he's just too in _love_."

Steve freezes; they fall apart, heaving and snickering and laughing.

"_Eeeeverybody's_ in love with Captain America these days," Natasha slurs. "I'm sure she'll understand."

"For _sure_," Sam laughs.

"That's not funny," Steve manages.

Natasha looks up at him with bleary, smeared eyes. "Oh, Steve. Come _on_."

He just looks away, his jaw tight.

They completely pave over his silence, and it's another hour until they leave.

* * *

When they were younger, Bucky was a master at subtlety. It's how he got so many girls, so easily, and how he made all of the adults in the room fall in love with his bright eyes and charming smile. He utilized subtext and silences to his advantage, and made every move, every word, amount to something. Steve sees a lot of that still in him now – even as the Winter Soldier, an entity that rarely spoke, Steve could see language in the tiny strip of Bucky's face that was actually ever exposed. Words that didn't have to be said to be understood.

After Sam and Natasha leave, Steve sees that the moment he walks into the room, and Bucky stares at him from the bed.

He heard.

Steve, not nearly as skilled at silences, says, "I'm sorry."

Bucky's face flickers. An unreadable tremor.

Still, he hasn't told Steve to leave, so he climbs in beside him in hopes that their camaraderie can persevere. A petty hope, because this is _different_. Even Bucky abandons his mastery of quiet for a while when it's something significant – when he reads his thoughts aloud as if translating them. And, for months, what's been dancing just beyond the realm of language has finally been put into it: in a realm where someone besides the two of them, so used to wordless glances after a near-sleepless night in the freezing cold or a silent conversation held working the line in the factory, can understand it.

Where it can't be denied.

They watch each other through the dark for the longest time, and there are no words there. There's nothing.

Steve rolls over and kisses Bucky without really knowing why.

The prosthesis is shockingly cold alongside the other arm that winds around Steve's back but _fuck_, Bucky is warm. He's _burning_ beneath Steve, and it makes them both gasp for breath before even daring to move in again.

It's not pleasurable at first. It's rough and confused, as they both try to ignore what they're doing. Then Bucky parts his lips fully and his tongue slides into Steve's mouth and Steve has never kissed anyone like this. Ever.

Suddenly, it feels so good, it travels down his entire body like an electric pulse. And he can't take it.

Bucky's still lying there, panting, when Steve leaves the room.

**to be continued**


	4. Forget Me Here

The world wasn't the same after the first war. Before the darker days, Steve's mother used to tell him stories: his father, still alive and happy; neighborhoods that had a natural camaraderie, not a bond formed over fear; a sustainable and healthy economy; hope and enthusiasm for the sparkling lights of the twentieth century.

Steve was born in the First War's death year; his father, returning from the Western Front with a piece ripped from his soul, nearly dropped Steve the first time he held him. Every other time after that, whenever Steve would cry, his mother took care of him. His father, shell-shocked and slowly rotting around the poison in his lungs, couldn't deal with the noise.

Even though his mother loved to talk about it, Steve didn't know the world before the war. And he'd freeze beneath miles of ice before he could see the world after the only war he ever knew. He didn't know the good well enough to lament its loss, like his mother did. After the Great Depression hit and he and Bucky had to start stealing to stay alive, the two of them would sprint from curbside cops with smiles on their faces. They'd share stale bread and mushy apples and cold soup in back alleys and hunched behind benches in Central Park laughing as they shivered. It was what they knew; a warm bed for more than a day was a blessing, and a week of work was mythical.

They didn't understand that things used to be _good_. That's how thoroughly and deeply the war dug its hooks into the world – that petty theft for basic survival was okay. _Fun_, even.

Before Bucky kissed him, it was okay. All of it was okay. The worst part was over, and they'd been coasting downhill. And, if there's one thing that Steve grew up knowing, is that no structure stays standing after a bomb. No world escapes a war without scars – not before, not now.

He sleeps on the couch that night, because he's still weak.

* * *

Bucky comes down with his shirt already on for the first time in months.

That mouth is bruised as it bitterly says good morning.

Steve nods, staring into the sizzling pan. The temperature in the room has already sunk.

"If you're thinking about ignoring me," Bucky says evenly, opening the fridge, "don't."

"I wasn't thinking that."

Buck just raises an eyebrow, like he's waiting.

Steve sighs. "What do you want me to say?"

Bucky scoffs and turns away. "That just means you're thinking something I wouldn't like."

"Don't make this harder."

"Oh, I'm _sorry_. I didn't mean to inconvenience you."

"_Stop_," Steve snaps. "Okay? Just stop it. You're acting like a child." He scrapes the eggs out of the pan onto a plate; the scratch of metal-on-metal is piercing. "Here."

"I don't want your fucking food," Bucky snarls, smacking it out of Steve's hand. The sound the arm makes is a chilling echo of the bridge, when the Soldier tried to drive a knife through Steve's chest.

They both watch the ceramic careen to the floor. Ruined forever.

"Bucky," Steve says quietly, right as Bucky shoves past him. The prosthesis slams full-force into Steve's shoulder, but it couldn't hurt more than the thick knot in his throat.

* * *

"Apologize," Natasha tells him.

"_What?_" She just shrugs, returning to her food. "Nat," Steve presses, "apologize for _what_?"

"You kissed him back, Steve. You kissed him _first_. You can't be mad at him."

Can't he? Can't he be a little angry at _something_?

"I don't know what to do now."

"I do: _apologize_," she repeats, slower, and he lets the conversation end.

* * *

Steve doesn't apologize.

Bucky doesn't come home until two or three for weeks at a time, smelling strongly of vodka and even stronger of grief. Once or twice he'll swing around and try to kiss Steve in a drunken haze, and one night as Steve pulls him up the stairs, he slurs out, "I love you."

"Almost there, Buck."

"_No_," Buck says, pushing one of his metal fingers so roughly into Steve's chest that it knocks against his heart, "you're my – _best_ friend…"

"Stop," Steve says to no one.

"Love you," Bucky says again, right before he slumps and is out.

Steve tells him none of it. Every morning, Bucky wakes up and leaves with a hell of a headache and a widening hole in his chest, as nothing but silence surrounding him.

He doesn't take off the tags, though. Not that Steve does, either, but he still checks; they hang in front of Bucky's clavicle like two bodies hung in a town square.

* * *

July comes and goes in a hot, sluggish heat wave. Steve misses the fireworks, the barbeques, and his face posted all over the city. Like he still deserves it.

There is nowhere to turn. Natasha sticks to her guns, saying "apologize," and Sam is staying the hell away from all of it, and when Clint comes to town, all he can offer are the names of the HYDRA agents Fury found. Lined up and executed.

"Good," is all Steve can think to say. Not _did they have families_. Not _did they beg for their lives_. Nothing. He doesn't care. He _snarls_ it. Good. Good. Fucking great. He wants them dead, all of them dead and buried, for what they did to his best friend. He wants to kill them with his bare hands.

Clint gives him a wary look, and Steve can see then why he and Natasha are partners.

* * *

Fury won't relent, because that's how life is. It doesn't care that Steve is tired, just damn tired, of the whole goddamn parade. He tells Fury, "Not now," and Fury says, "Well that's just too fucking bad." Because life has never stopped, never slowed down, for anyone. Not even Captain America.

There's been an attack. "An attack" sounds vague and like a coverup at best to Steve, but that's all Fury gives him. Enough to know it's nature, not what it is. Enough to entice, but what Fury doesn't know is that the life-saving fuse within Captain America is damp and nearly refuses to be kindled. He hears that people have died, and nods the way someone who's mind is going nods to maintain the last facade of sanity.

August comes, and Bucky starts drinking at home. At night, Steve has to move upstairs again, because waking up to hear crying in the kitchen is too much to bear.

* * *

Some nights he'll talk, and that's worse.

* * *

He has to re-introduce himself when he visits her, and thank God she doesn't remember that Bucky's alive.

It makes him feel safe. Safe enough to ask her, right as visiting hours come to a close.

"Peggy," Steve begins. She looks at him with bright, curious eyes. "So – what if, you had a friend? A good friend –"

"Let's hope I have _a_ friend, Steve," she teases, and he smiles.

"Let's say you were friends for a long time, and then one day, they kissed you. Or – you kissed them. But you didn't mean to."

"Is that possible? To kiss without meaning it?"

He utters a small laugh. "I don't know, Peg. That's the thing."

"Oh, Steve," she says in a warm, motherly way. "It sounds like you need to figure out what you want first."

"I've been trying."

"How does she feel about it?"

"He," he blurts in correction. She just smiles without judgement and the dying, bloody sunlight refracts in her eyes. "What can I tell you? He's angry with me – and not because it happened. Because I can't...decide."

"No, he's not."

Steve blinks – unsure if such a strong voice could come from such a fragile, bedridden woman.

Except that woman _is_ Peggy Carter.

"He's not?"

"Of course not," she says, almost scolding. He offers nothing, and she lightly bops him on the arm with her cold, veined hand. "C'mon, Steve. He's angry because you made him hope."

...Could that be it?

"Peggy," Steve begins, but she floats away again, so he folds her hands on her lap and lays a kiss on her forehead before he goes.

Did he? Did he make Bucky hope? Is that what's wedged this enormous canyon between them and is just daring one of them to fall in?

* * *

A week later, Bucky breaks the silence around midnight with –

"HYDRA got so fucking excited."

This is not him repeating thoughts aloud to remember this. This is him brandishing a knife that he's about to hurt Steve with.

"What?" Steve asks tiredly from the stairs, blankets hanging by his feet.

"Two years ago, in New York. That crazy alien guy who tried to kill everyone – oh fuck, they _loved_ that." Bucky throws back a straight line of tequila. "Someone was doing their job for them."

"Put the bottle down, Buck."

"Make me," he snarls like a dog on a chain. His hair is getting long and hangs in front of his eyes, now that no one cares again. He's beautiful the way a tornado is beautiful, or a hurricane. The way a car crash, bodies slamming into windshields and blood and glass on concrete, is beautiful.

Steve thinks of saying sorry, but is there even a point?

"I remember you," Bucky hisses. "I remember. _Captain America _was all over TV for weeks. I started to remember then, too – _really_ remember – so HYDRA shoved me in a freezer and froze me for six months."

He says it like its Steve fault, and Steve understands that, in a way, it is.

"The costume," Buck says, and the way he fades off at the end with a small, resentful chuckle could almost be mistaken for nostalgia. If only it was. If only Steve didn't know better. If only after a moment, he didn't swing away to drink more booze and the curtain didn't fall shut yet again.

Steve goes upstairs to call Fury's burner phone, and tells him he's in.

* * *

When the phone rings next, it's Sharon, saying she just might be ready to take up that cup of coffee now.

Steve says yes, because he's convinced she'll be able to distract him. Because he's bigger and faster, but still a man.

Bucky has a nightmare the night before that has him screaming like his foot's snagged in a bear trap. And Steve leaves him there the next day to meet a girl he barely knows. Leaves him there to drown.

Mankind is not known for its strength.

* * *

Steve doesn't mean to, but after, he and Sharon wind up kissing in front of the steps of the brownstone.

Bucky kisses with determination. Sharon kisses to be flirty, teasing and nipping at him, while Bucky was solid and focused. One is dizzying to endure, like an assault, and the other is slippery and clumsy, like a tumble down a cliff.

Steve spends the entire time thinking about this disparity, and she, confused and fumbling for politeness, just smiles goodbye and does not tell him to call her.

Bucky doesn't even try to hold back tonight, half-drunk already and muttering when Steve comes in to hang up his coat.

"Unbelievable," Bucky growls from the kitchen, spitting it out like a nasty taste. Glass clinks in the cupboard as he blindly paws for another drink.

"What's wrong?" Steve asks. As if that'll make anything better.

As if he doesn't already _know_.

"Oh," Bucky rhapsodizes, with a bottle of Jim Beam now, "it's nothing. It's just – shit. I had no idea all I had to do to entice you was grow a pair of tits and laugh at your stupid fucking jokes."

His words sting like acid.

"Bucky," Steve says, wounds still open and too tired to fight. "Not tonight."

"Sorry, I forgot. It's supposed to be never, right?"

Steve sighs.

"How could you," Bucky begins to snarl; then, the bottle shatters in his reckless, fierce hands, and the glass slices his flesh fingers. "_FUCK._"

Steve closes his eyes.

"I know you," Bucky seethes, stabbing a metal finger into his chest. The tags clinks together beneath his shirt. "_I_ know you. _Me._"

"Buck –"

His eyes shine horribly. "_Fuck _you."

"_It's not fair_," Steve yells, and that stops him. Stops them both. "Can't you see that, Buck? Can't you see what you're _asking_ from me? I'd do anything for you – you _know_ that. You've always known that. But we're not _married_ now that you've kissed me. _Okay?_"

Bucky just stares at him, until Steve feels the cold fist grabbing his stomach tighten.

"Buck –"

"Don't talk to me," his friend whispers. And Steve, hurting and lost and useless, gets the hell out of there.

* * *

Silence is deafening to listen to.

Bucky stops drinking, or doing anything at all, really. The summer's nearly up and nothing swims in the heat.

After Bucky got drafted, Steve had to come to terms for the first time that morning, he'd wake up and Bucky might not be there anymore.

This is kind of like that, except Bucky is already gone.

* * *

When he was fifteen and Bucky was sixteen, Buck started to call Steve "handsome" a lot.

Then, after Steve's father passed away, they started sharing that bed. That bed, where he cried so many times and Bucky held him. Where Steve fell asleep every night with his head on Bucky's chest. Where he grew used to the feeling of their legs entwined.

Steve tortures himself with the idea that this is not new. That the kiss was not a twist in their plot, but a destined part of the storyline. He scrapes his memory for every longing look, each time Bucky touched him for just a little too long. And there are a lot of times.

He isn't sure if it's to cope, or if it's just another way to blame himself. He doesn't care. Anything to fill the spaces.

* * *

The phone ringing sounds like a bomb detonating.

Steve dives for it, but Bucky answers upstairs in Steve's office. Not that he needs to – it's definitely not going to be for him – and he takes the longest time coming down the stairs.

"Phone's for you," Bucky says flatly. The dark fire in his eyes flickers jaggedly as their gazes meet, and Steve feels sick for a moment, thinking it's Sharon.

But it's a man. One he's never spoken to before.

"My name is David," the man explains. "You don't know me, but –"

"Look, kid," Steve sighs, "if you want an autograph, or to tell me I'm your biggest fan, I appreciate that, I do –"

"No," he laughs, but it sounds hesitant. "No, Steve, I don't. But you knew my mother, Peggy."

Oh. Steve stops.

The man keeps going, and this is not a happy call, after all.

* * *

She's not dead. But she might as well be.

David doesn't tell him much, just that Peggy's been transferred to a private hospital upstate – no visitors – and that things "aren't looking good." The disease that's been chewing on her brain for years has begun to interfere with her motor skills. Like breathing.

Steve's entire world falls apart again, before he can even rake it back together.

* * *

"Who was that?" Bucky asks downstairs – dull voice failing to disguise his dying curiosity.

"Not Sharon." Something resentful kicks and thrashes inside of him, drunk off his fear. "Not anyone you should feel threatened by, either, so don't fucking worry about it."

Bucky blinks, a little stunned. Fire from Steve is rare and disarming, like watching lightning strike the roof of a neighboring car.

"Did something happen?"

Steve hesitates, because the anger is still smoldering. Because, really, what the hell does he owe Bucky?

But his rebellion is short and bitter. He's still not blind enough to completely turn his back.

"It's Peggy."

Bucky's face tweaks with a painful sluice of relief – relief that Steve's even still _talking_ to him.

"What about her?"

"Problems. It…" Steve sighs, rubbing his left eye. "I don't know."

"I'm sure things'll be –"

"No – they don't know if she's gonna make it, Buck." Steve's voice is a knife that slices through the air. "Okay?"

Bucky's face falls. Steve turns away so he doesn't have to see.

"Oh."

"Alzheimer's is fatal."

"Steve," Bucky says, "I didn't –"

"And now," Steve says, rubbing his face even more, "Fury wants me back on for some _other_ world catastrophe. But I don't know _how_ I'm supposed to deal with all that."

Bucky just looks at him now, brow heavy with sentiment.

"I'm only human. People tend to forget that."

"Not me."

Ice clips the corners of the room, and their eyes lock.

"Don't do this," Steve says quietly.

Bucky is a terrible combination of pain and fury as he leans in. "You gave the world for me –"

"I owe you that." Steve laughs bitterly. "Hell – I owe you _more_."

"So that's what this is? A _debt_?" He makes it sound like a gunshot.

Just like that, they're talking about it.

"No – God no, Bucky –"

"Then what? Don't you owe me _that_, too?"

"I don't want you centering your world around me. I want you to _live_. There's _so much_ for you here, Buck."

Bucky's silent for a moment.

Quietly, he says, "There's nothing without you."

"Damnit," Steve bursts, aside himself yet again, "damnit, _damnit_, don't you _get it_? You weren't supposed to –"

The air in the room thins.

Fall in love. _You weren't supposed to fall in love with me, Buck._ It's never said, yet it rings in the painfully small space.

Steve's first grasp at subtext, and it's clumsy and lousy and horrible.

"Yeah," Bucky says quietly. "I wasn't supposed to do a lot of things, huh?"

"Bucky –"

"I'm sorry." It's real, too. A real apology for what happened.

Steve covers his eyes.

"I just – when I saw the marks, I thought…" Bucky's hand flies to his throat. Toward the name stamped into his skin.

"I know," Steve whispers. "It's okay."

"You kissed me back."

"I did." Because there's no point in denying it now.

"You felt it." The determination in Bucky's voice is _killing him_.

Steve wants to deny it, but nothing comes instead. Bucky's face does another painful twist.

"Steve –"

"I need to think about this. Okay?"

"Think about _what_?"

"I don't know. This? Us? Just...give me time."

"I _gave_ you time," Bucky says miserably. "Look – if you're going to say something bad –"

"I won't," Steve cuts in. Bucky just stares at him, lost, and Steve sinks his face into his hands. "I just can't do this right now."

Bucky sucks in a sharp breath, ready to fight, but then he surrenders altogether – and Steve hates himself a little more as silence begins to snow around them.

He made Bucky sound so arbitrary – so unimportant. _God._

"I know what I want," Bucky murmurs after a while, practically to no one at all. "Do you?"

_What do you like? Sam asked him. Steve couldn't even answer._

So he supposes, he's never truly known.

**to be continued**


	5. Blood Brothers

Sam's knocking wakes Steve up the next morning.

"Is Bucky around?"

"Yeah, why?"

Sam leans up in the doorway. "We haven't seen him at the last few meetings." The look he sends Steve is too pointed to disregard. "Just wondering if something's happened."

"No," Steve says sharply. "Nothing's happened."

Sam raises an eyebrow that says _You sure?_

Steve, to make a point, bellows over his shoulder, "_Bucky!_"

"Yeah?" a voice returns from upstairs.

"Sam's here."

Footsteps rush down the stairs. Steve catches Sam looking at him and scowls.

Sam just raises his hands. Then, to Bucky – who stands behind Steve now – he says, "Hey. I swung by to check how you are."

"Oh."

"You haven't been to a meeting in a while," Sam adds. "That's all."

It's a thin lie, but Bucky doesn't push it.

"Been busy. Are you guys getting together today?"

"Yeah, in about an hour."

"Okay. I'll get some shoes on."

"Hey," Sam says, leaning further into the door, "Ray was back on Monday, by the way."

Bucky laughs. "Crazy Ray?"

"He thought we wouldn't recognize him if he cut his hair."

"What the fuck's his _deal_, anyways?" Bucky's grinning now; Steve can hear it plainly in his voice. "Why would anyone try to –"

Steve clears his throat. "Can I come?"

They turn to him, brows collectively knit.

_You're still here?_

"Why?" Sam asks. It's toneless, but Steve still bristles.

"I was in a war, wasn't I? Two wars, technically."

"Yeah – but…" Sam looks past Steve, at Bucky. Like Steve's not even there.

It irrevocably pisses him off.

"Never mind," he snaps, ignoring Sam's wince. "It's fine."

"Next time," Bucky says thinly.

"Sure." Steve hurries back into the brownstone, face flaming where they can't see.

* * *

Bucky's out late that night. Steve stays up, watching the clock as it strikes up: ten, then eleven. Midnight and silence.

The door bangs open around four.

"Oh shit," Bucky whispers when he sees Steve appear at the top of the stairs. His shoe dangles halfway off of his foot. "Did I wake you?"

"No," Steve answers – intending to sound cold, but his voice is hoarse from sleeplessness. "I've been up. Waiting for you."

Bucky grins. "How sweet of you."

"Where the fuck were you, Buck?"

"Out." At a bar, judging by the smile sloppily splashed across his face. He staggers as proof. "Ohh..._man_. HYDRA told me I couldn't get drunk, but thank God they were wrong."

"Bucky –"

"Miss me?" He stumbles closer to the stairs. "Shit fuck can...Steve can you –"

Steve goes down to help. Bucky's head rolls closer to Steve's as they climb: vodka. Bucky's least favorite.

Steve throws Bucky off suddenly, onto the top landing of the stairs.

"Whoa," Bucky laughs, on his back. Steve storms past. "Hey, whoa, whoa – what was that for? Steve!"

"Keep your voice down. People are sleeping."

"Who? The neighbors through a foot of plaster?" Bucky asks, trailing along behind him.

"Did you sleep with him?"

"Huh?"

"Nothing," Steve spits instead. "Come on. I need to go to bed."

"Did I…"

"Bucky." He points toward the room. "Bed."

"Ooh," Bucky teases with a drunken leer. "So eager to get me in your bed, huh, Rogers?"

Steve feels his spine snap straight like rod.

"Oh, calm down," Bucky laughs as he moves past; his shoulder brushes along Steve's torso. "I'm not _that_ drunk."

He smells like vodka and sweat. His own. No sex.

Steve hates himself for even wanting to check.

"Did you, though?" he asks, cracking. Bucky looks at him with glazed, quizzical eyes.

"What? Get laid?" Bucky snorts. "Hell no. Wish I had."

Steve turns to leave. It's too late for this.

"Why?" Bucky calls behind him. He actually _giggles_. "You offering?"

Steve whips around so quickly, so suddenly, his head nearly cracks against the door frame. Bucky just laughs and Steve charges forward, into the room. On top of Bucky, pinning his wrists to the bed.

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you," he snarls into Bucky's face – still smiling hazily. Bucky's eyes roll around like marbles on a linoleum floor, slow and lazy.

"Whaddya mean?" he slurs through that smile. Steve wants to rip it off.

"You hate vodka."

"I do?"

"_Yes_," Steve snaps. "You always have."

Bucky looks up at him for a moment, before he bursts out laughing.

"You think this is _funny_? Huh?" he demands, shaking Bucky hard. "You think – think I just – I can –"

Bucky kisses him. Steve melts.

Bucky's a good kisser, even drunk. The vodka is sour and sweet and thick on his tongue. It's the best thing Steve's ever tasted.

"Grey Goose," he manages to pant into the air shuddering between their lips.

Bucky grins. "You're good."

"No," Steve murmurs, but he lets Bucky kiss him again, so deeply this time that his entire body forgets to be angry and his hands fall away from Bucky's wrists. Again; Bucky's arms wrap around him. "No I'm – not." His mouth doesn't even want to form words.

"No?" Bucky looks on, devilish. "You saying you're bad?"

"Bucky…" Steve groans.

"Relax." Bucky cranes his neck to kiss Steve again, and Steve falters for a crucial moment. "Steve – c'mon."

"I think you should sleep it off."

"Never gonna sleep off love, baby," Bucky intones, nearly musical; Steve feels that rage burble up inside of him again.

"Where were you until four in the goddamn morning?"

"I told you. Out."

"Why didn't you call? Christ, Bucky, I thought you were –"

"I'm pushing ninety-seven," Bucky burbles, making no move to wipe the spit bubbling at the corner of his lip. "I can take care of myself."

"But at _four in the morning_? What was I supposed to think?"

Bucky's smile returns, lopsided. "You're so pretty."

Steve pushes away from the bed again. "We'll talk about this in the morning."

"Love you," Bucky murmurs in reply. "Love you, Steve Rogers."

"You've never said that sober," Steve replies coldly. Meanly. Trying to make that actually mean something.

"You thought I was out getting _fucked_ tonight," Bucky laughs, "and I'm drunk as hell – does that make it any less true just 'cause I'm sayin' it?"

Steve shuts the door behind him.

* * *

Bucky stays in bed until two in the afternoon.

Steve hears knees hitting the bathroom tiles. Bucky's throat ripping raw for a good forty seconds. He shakes his head.

Another six minutes before he finally comes down. In one of Steve's shirts.

"Morning," he says, reaching for the lukewarm pot of coffee.

"I didn't say you could wear that."

Bucky flicks a smile at him. "But don't I look dashing?" The mug he sets on the counter bangs the granite and he flinches. "_Ow._"

"You want Tylenol?" Steve asks, softening for a moment.

"No," Bucky replies – smart enough not to shake his head. "No, it's alright."

Steve dumps two into his palm anyways, and drops some bread in the toaster while Bucky shakily raises the mug to his lips. He eyes Steve past the rim as he bends to get the peanut butter from the pantry.

"I take it you've dealt with my hangovers before?"

"Try all of them."

Bucky smiles. "Thanks, Steve."

"You told me you loved me," Steve blurts.

Bucky laughs, startled – then sobers when he sees Steve's face.

"Seriously? When?"

Steve shrugs. "Last night...or this morning, I guess – whenever, really. You've said it more than once."

Bucky looks a little pale. The only sound, for a long while, is the prosthesis grinding quietly.

The toast pops.

"Okay," he says finally.

"Okay?" Steve repeats; Bucky won't meet his eye. "_Okay?_ That's all?"

"I guess."

"Fuck, Bucky. You can't just – _say_ something like that, and just be like, 'Oh, okay.' _God_."

At last, there's eyes contact. "Do you want me to tell you I meant it?" Bucky asks coldly. "Because that's seriously what it sounds like you're asking me."

"Did you?"

"Yes." They both want – _need_ – to look away. But how can they? "Yes, I did."

"What's gotten into you?" Steve rasps.

"What do you think?" Bucky replies.

"Oh God. This is –"

"Do you?"

"Bucky, stop."

"_Do you?_"

"_I don't know_," Steve snaps. Bucky stares at him, eyes betraying his helplessness. "I – maybe. Maybe. I don't know yet."

"Yeah?" Ignoring the pain in his head, Bucky slams the mug down. Coffee spills on his metal fingers. "Well figure it out, _Steve_."

The venom in his voice makes Steve flinch.

"What's the matter with you?" he demands, voice splintering off at the end. "Huh? Why are you doing this?"

Bucky just laughs.

"Answer me. Do you think this is _fair_?"

"Which part? You holding out on me or me being straight with you?" Bucky stares him down, eyes bloodshot and menacing. "I'll bet I kissed you last night, too."

Steve's silence is answer enough.

"I'll bet," Bucky continues icily, "you kissed back."

"_Fuck_," Steve moans. "I can't do this."

"Then don't," Bucky says.

"I'll only hurt you. I'm only gonna hurt you, Bucky."

Another bitter laugh, spit out this time. Bucky pinches his fingers to his temple. "More than you already have?"

"Oh God. Please stop."

"No."

"I'm not – it wasn't like this, Buck. It wasn't like this, growing up. We weren't this way."

"Weren't we?"

Steve looks up.

"My twenty-first birthday," Bucky says. "I kissed you four times."

_Oh, shit._

_That was your first kiss, huh? _That smile. That damn smile of his. _That's two. Three._

_Four._

"You were drunk," Steve says, mouth dry. Not that that's really an excuse anymore.

Bucky shrugs. "So? I feel like that just means I'd wanted to do it all along."

He's right. Steve doesn't even need to think about it. He just knows.

"And I'm sorry," Bucky continues, voice softening. "I'm sorry for just – doing that, and leaving you there. I should have talked to you about it."

Steve spent so long after that thinking about it. Dreaming about it.

"You should have," he manages.

Bucky smiles. "Admittedly, we're pretty bad for each other."

"Then why do you bother?"

"The same reason you bothered with me."

The air gets sucked out of Steve's lungs.

He'd never thought of it like that.

"I love you," Bucky says, "and I don't give up easily."

"You never have," Steve mutters, and that makes Bucky laugh the first real laugh of the day.

"That's ironic, coming from you."

* * *

Bucky's twenty-first birthday. 1938.

Steve remembers, with stunning clarity, how hard it was to drag Bucky home from the bar. But he managed, and he was damn proud of it, all the way to the foot of the stairs.

Until Bucky opens his mouth.

"Hey, Steve."

"Yeah, Buck?" he says, and Bucky kisses him then.

It's short. Maybe four seconds, before Steve wrenches away.

Bucky just smiles at him, eyes half-closed.

"_What are you doing_," Steve wheezes. His lips burn and tingle. His entire body betrays him in that moment.

"Oh shit," Bucky slurs in reply. "That was your first kiss, huh?"

Steve wants to punch him. To beat him.

He wants to kiss him again.

Not that he even has to. Bucky leans in and does it for him.

"That's two," he says against Steve's mouth. He tastes like alcohol and cinnamon. Like fire.

Like yearning.

Steve is against a wall; he's _letting_ himself be against a wall. So Bucky kisses him again.

"Three."

The fourth time is different. Longer; long enough that Steve's body relaxes and then longer, longer still that he memorizes the motions of tongue and lips, and locks it in his mind – learns how to kiss from using his drunk best friend's sweet mouth.

Longer. Minutes. Steve wraps his arm around Bucky's neck and Bucky hoists him up so their heads are level.

Heaven.

Tongue. Mostly Bucky's at first, before he coaxes Steve and that's another barrier that's broken down.

It feels amazing.

Bucky's the one who ends it this time.

"Four," he murmurs. Steve can feel their hearts pounding through their shirts.

"Bucky," he tries, but Bucky shakes his head. And Steve's glad, because he doesn't even know what to say.

Bucky passes out on Steve's couch that night, and Steve sleeps in his own bed, his mouth warm and buzzing.

The morning is silence.

* * *

_I love you, and I don't give up easily._

* * *

For nearly two weeks, Bucky spends every day out with Sam, and doesn't get back until three or four in the morning.

Steve gives up trying to talk to him, because Bucky always winds up pinning him against a wall or the bed – and it's just tiring Steve out.

Mainly because he's running out of fight.

His resolve is barely holding. Bucky's in his head now, his blood. Several times, he almost lets it happen. Almost doesn't hold a hand up to Bucky's chest to stop him.

September comes to a close, and fall's nearly in full bloom out on the street. The sugar maple outside the brownstone has exploded into bright vermillions, scarlets, oranges, and yellows, and dry leaves crackle beneath his feet like embers in a fire whenever he visits Natasha, or takes a walk just so he can get out of the house. Autumn was Bucky's favorite time of year; Steve considers telling him this, but he just misses him one morning.

Out on the sidewalk, he's already walking with Sam, laughing hysterically. Steve lets him black out on the couch that night.

He's horrid, and knows it, and he just lets it happen. Lets it grow like a weed inside of him.

One night, when Bucky's sober and tells him Sam wants to take him and Natasha – read: not Steve – to California for a weekend, they wind up fighting until Steve spits, "So what, are you falling in love with _him_, too?"

The fire in his words singe his tongue. Bucky stares him, shocked.

"You know what?" he asks in a low, hurt voice. "Maybe I am. Just for you, Steve. Anything for you."

"Bucky." Steve clumsily fumbles for an apology, an excuse – anything. "I'm didn't mean –"

"No," Bucky says. His eyes don't move. "You did."

"Bucky," Steve whispers. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are."

_But it doesn't matter._

"Where are you going?" Steve asks, a little light-headed.

"Out. For a while."

He hears the fear in Steve's voice, and avoids it, to be cruel.

Bucky makes it to the door before Steve blurts, "I love you."

Bucky doesn't look up.

"Do you mean that, or are you just saying it now?"

Steve chokes a little, because they both know the answer.

"Just – don't go. Please."

Bucky stands there.

"I won't see you again," Steve says, "if you leave. Will I?"

"Probably not."

"That's fair. But I do – love you. Okay?"

"Fuck you," Bucky whispers, and when he turns, he's actually crying. "You think it's fair to just do this to me _now_? When I've been trying for _so long _–"

"Don't go."

Bucky covers his eyes, sobbing now.

"It's just – with you being gone so much lately, I've...I've had so much time to –"

"I've been seeing a therapist." Their eyes meet. "Okay?"

Steve blinks, a little stunned.

"Sam takes me," Bucky says, sounding humiliated. "Every other day, so I can go to meetings, too. We get drinks after. He usually goes home around midnight, but I stay late. I mean...the shit I talk about." Bitter smile. "I'm not strong like you, Steve."

"I had no idea."

"No, because you didn't ask." Bucky just scoffs. "God – I'm so sick of fighting. It feels like that's all we do when we talk anymore."

"Sorry," Steve whispers. When Bucky looks at him, Steve tries to smile.

"You're my best friend. You always will be."

"I know."

"And I'm not sleeping with Sam," Bucky adds, "just to clarify. Frankly, he's kinda got a thing for Natasha – I mean, you should hear this guy when he gets drunk."

Steve laughs at the thought of Sam drunkenly raving over Nat. Then, he laughs a little more, until he chokes. Bucky laughs, too.

"Idiot," he says affectionately.

It's not forgiveness. But _I'm staying_ is what he means, and Steve's heart swells because, for now, that's enough. That's enough.

After a minute, he says, "I have an idea for tomorrow."

* * *

Walking down a street in New York gets Steve enough looks; in a group full of veterans, it's like Christmas morning.

"You were the reason I enlisted," says a Nam vet, Ace. His good eye – the other, scratched and cloudy like Fury's – sparkles. "You're an inspiration."

Steve smiles. "Thank you."

"My grandfather fought in Korea," says Dee, a startlingly young captain fresh home from a tour in Afghanistan. "He saw you at a rally in Minneapolis – shook your hand, too. You were a household name growing up."

"Really?" Steve leans closer. "I'm so sorry."

She laughs – a smoker's laugh that has her coughing.

"Believe it or not," Sam says from the podium, "Captain America is a good friend of mine, and he was kind enough to grace us with his presence today."

Steve rolls his eyes. "Save it, Sam." The group laughs.

"_Anyways_," Sam grins, "why don't you come up? Say a few words?"

"Why don't I?" Steve heads for the podium; Sam checks him with his shoulder as they pass, and Steve exaggerates a fall.

More laughter. They love him.

"Uh, well –" Steve laughs. "Sorry. I've just never done this before."

"Tell us about all those HYDRA bases you destroyed," someone suggests.

"Ooh, no, tell us about Red Skull," Sam says; a ripple of excited agreement passes over the crowd. "Tell us how you buried that kraut six feet under."

Near the middle, Bucky just shakes his head.

"Actually," Steve says, "he killed himself. He tried to use the Tesseract and it destroyed him. I didn't do anything."

"Serves him right," a voice near the back mutters.

"Well, yes. He was horrible. But there are so many – I guess, there's just so many things they got wrong. After I thawed out, I read a book about myself at the library that said I came close to killing Hitler. But I never even met him. I'd never even come close to him. I knocked out an out-of-work actor dressed like Hitler a couple hundred times, sure, but...not the real thing.

"That's the thing," Steve says, "about the fame. It was all glamorized. All those shows I did – punching Hitler two hundred times in the face –" Pause, for laughter. He smiles a little. "– that wasn't war. I hated it, because I knew I wasn't _doing_ anything for our country. Just got dressed up and read off of a script."

Bucky is openly staring at him. These are words they've never exchanged – things Bucky never saw.

"People didn't – didn't see." Steve swallows. "They didn't see the war. They saw a laboratory experiment in a red, white, and blue costume. They still do. They weren't there, on the front. Where men lost their limbs, their lives.

"Where I lost my best friend."

Tense pause. No one nods in understanding now.

Steve does not move to check Bucky's face.

"It was my fault. We were hijacking a train when the hull got breached and he – fell off. I couldn't save him. I tried, but I couldn't."

"That doesn't make it your fault, Steve." Sam.

Steve laughs painfully. "I'm a super soldier. I'm enhanced. I could have done something."

"All this time," says a man, Josiah. An ex-marine with a prosthetic leg. "All this time carrying that weight. It's not fair to you."

"Yeah, well – it wasn't fair that I let him die. It still happened."

"You didn't let him die," Sam says, a little more forcefully now. "Don't do that to yourself. You didn't throw him off the train, and you didn't choose for him to fall. When Riley died, I thought the same thing. But you can't save everyone, Steve." He smiles empathically. "No matter how enhanced you are."

Steve smiles, too.

"I'm sure your friend would forgive you," Dee pipes up from the back. "If he was still alive."

"He would." Bucky says. His eyes are bright when Steve finally rises to meet them, which makes him laugh suddenly. Which makes both of them laugh.

The other members exchange confused looks; Sam just shakes his head, a parent with his two children.

* * *

When Bucky gets up to the podium, he tells them a story Steve recognizes: killing Howard and Maria Stark.

His eyes get all filmy and far-away as he talks, his mind desperately forcing a disparity between himself and the Winter Soldier. Recreating that canyon and driving it between the two. He makes a point of telling them that he was forced to do it. They all nod.

"I met their son," Bucky says. "I met him, and it nearly killed me."

The nodding stops there. Steve gets the sense, with him, it always does eventually.

Bucky's crying a little by the end, until Steve murmurs, "You need to stop hating yourself," and Bucky's head snaps up. Air drags in and out of him heavily, like smoke.

"What?"

"You need to stop hating yourself," Steve repeats, louder. "It wasn't your fault."

Bucky smiles that secret, crooked smile he only smiles for Steve; the tears in his eyes wink with sunlight. "Guess we got to you, huh, Rogers?"

Scattered, uncertain chuckles. "Maybe," Steve says, smiling. "But you weren't _you_, Buck. Don't blame yourself when it wasn't even your choice to begin with."

"It's hard not to." The prosthesis, gripping the podium, hums quietly.

"I know. But it's okay."

"Is it?" Bucky asks, and he's not talking about Howard and Maria anymore.

Steve looks into his eyes. "Absolutely."

Bucky smiles again and the tears have disappeared – and, for a minute, it's just them.

* * *

Bucky and Steve have a late lunch after the meeting, and walk home together.

There's a message on the machine, from David. Peggy died this morning.

The day is like a breath after being underwater, before you get forced under again.

**to be continued**

* * *

**A/N:** This will probably be the second to last chapter. (I promise things finally get better!) Thank you to everyone for your kind words in the review section; this story has been a pretty wild ride, and _so_ much different than how I originally saw it ending. The plan is for it to end on a happy note - fingers crossed!


	6. These Hours, Days, Minutes

_Live like this: there is an end to you..._  
_Have your time and then let it go._

– Gabriel Gadfly, "Life and Death and Knowledge"

The first time Steve finds her, Peggy's eyes light up like a string of Christmas lights. Seventy years, and she knows exactly who he is.

There's a phonograph collecting dust in the corner of her room – hers, from a long time ago – and he puts on a crooning Ella Fitzgerald song and helps her out of bed for that long-overdue dance. In the center of the room, they sway slowly, like wheat moving with the breeze, because there's no need to rush. Because they're _here_ now, after being apart for so long. They have all the time in the world. After nothing but pain, he felt like he was in heaven.

Then Steve visits her the next day, Peggy remembers none of it.

"Where have you been?" she asks, trembling a little.

"I...at home, Peg." She continues to look on, starry-eyed, and he says, uncertain, "I'm...glad you missed me, at least."

"'Missed you?'" She laughs. "Steve Rogers, it's been nearly seventy years. I think a girl's allowed to miss you just a little."

"What are you talking about?" Steve asks, scared now. "I was here yesterday, Peggy."

"It's been so long," she replies in a choked, heartfelt voice, and he has no choice.

The doctors tell him afterward: Alzheimer's. Nearly eight years running and developing at an unsettling pace. "Be patient with her," the main ward supervisor suggests, as if Steve would be anything other than gentle.

So he is. The joy never dies; Peggy is never any less excited to see him, and he never gets tired of telling her the same stories – getting thawed out of the ice, the Avengers, and eventually, Bucky – as he clasps her hand. He learns a hundred different ways to tell them all and some days, she remembers him and he can tell her about the cabbie who nearly ran him over outside, or the Smithsonian exhibit, or something Stark said that makes her laugh until she's hacking a cough. They dance together so many times, too, and even though she doesn't remember, he still changes the song.

Every time, though, he feels her tears blotting on his shirt or his neck, and the vein reopens.

* * *

On the flight to Boston – where they'll be burying Peggy, beside her husband and parents – Steve's filled with a bitter, resentful thought: that he handled Bucky so well because he was used to memory loss at that point.

Immediately he pushes it away, but it doesn't matter. It's a hot iron that burns him, leaves its mark even in the brief second of contact. Bucky's asleep next to him, his head on Steve's shoulder, and Steve looks out the window of the plane, over the ocean of clouds pinking with the sunset.

In that moment, he hates himself more than he ever has.

* * *

The funeral is held at a church in the North End.

It's a closed casket, draped in red velvet – _her favorite color_ – and the stained glass window that rises up behind it creates a jagged Holy Mary. Her glass face is complacent, her cloaked arms spread wide.

Peggy was an atheist.

Her three children and sister all give speeches; the pews are full seven rows back, mostly SHIELD members and old friends. Fury's shrouded in the back and even Coulson's there, front row – among friends and safe.

Natasha touches Steve's arm when the priest asks if anyone else would like to speak. He does not go up.

* * *

Coulson hails them afterward, while they wait for the limos.

"Little dangerous, isn't it?" Clint asks, spotting him. "Walking around in broad daylight?"

He smiles. "That's kind of you, to assume I'm so important someone would actually want me dead." Clint smiles, too, and Coulson looks to Bucky. "So you're Sergeant Barnes."

"I was, yeah." They shake hands.

"Phil Coulson. Sorry we had to meet on today of all days."

"Steve's told me about you," Bucky says. "Big fan, huh?"

Coulson laughs. "You could say that."

Steve just stares at the curb.

* * *

After they bury her next to her husband, Bucky catches Steve's sleeve and quietly asks if he wants to talk.

"I didn't wanna talk at the service," Steve says, cold and numb under Bucky's hand. "What makes you think I wanna start now?"

"It's to me."

"And you're different than a room full of strangers?"

Bucky jerks back from the assault. "Just because you're hurting doesn't mean you need to be an _asshole_."

"I don't want to talk," Steve snaps. "I just need to be alone. How's that?"

Bucky just scoffs to himself, shaking his head. "I should have known you weren't gonna change."

Steve pauses. The clouds overhead are threatening rain, but stay silent; they make Bucky's eyes striking and unforgiving, like the blade of a knife.

"That's not fair, Buck."

"Don't talk to me about what's fair."

Steve laughs. "_Now_? Really, Bucky, we're really gonna do this now?"

"_Fuck_ you," Bucky barks, slamming a hand against Steve's chest that has him staggering back. Nearby, a SHIELD member – an ex-SHIELD member, rather – looks their way nervously.

Steve holds Bucky's blazing, infuriated eyes. "I know you wish you could." It drives the knife deep, and Steve can tell, no matter how hard Bucky grits his jaw.

"I'd rather _die_ than touch you right now, Rogers."

"Good. Then leave me the hell alone."

Bucky storms off, his face beet red. Steve feels like jumping off a cliff.

* * *

Steve doesn't go back to the hotel that night. Most criminals like to return to the scene of the crime, but he can't face what he's done.

At a bar down the block, the patrons are drunk and ignorant of his presence as he plunks down at the bar. When he tells the young bartender, "Just an ice water," the kid's face lights up.

"You're Captain America."

"I've been called that, yeah."

He signs a napkin for the kid, tempted to tell him _please don't look up to me_, but he's been cruel enough for one day.

The Coke wall clock mounted above the bar ticks away three hours – ten, then eleven, then midnight. He manages to get one glass down; the coaster he's using has a thin ring of water sitting on it that breaks and spills onto the bar when he nudges it with his pinkie.

"Thought I might find you here."

Steve sighs, clenching his tankard tighter. Natasha slides onto the stool beside him and signals the bartender for the top-shelf Smirnoff.

Steve takes a long swallow of the ice water as the bartender comes over with the tall, elegant bottle and a tumbler. Natasha flashes an ID, which surprises him – he completely forgot that she might actually need one.

"Thank you, sweetheart," she oozes and the bartender, who can't be more than twenty-two or twenty-three, flushes. Steve stares hard into his drink, listening to the clink of the bottle's mouth on her glass, and the fluid swish of vodka. Waiting for her to say –

"Peggy would want you to be happy."

"I don't want to talk, Natasha."

"I don't really care." She throws back the shot. "Frankly? You need to."

"I _was_ happy," he mumbles. "Now everything's fucked."

"Bull," Natasha replies. "You've been through worse."

"I barely survived after Bucky fell. What am I even supposed to _do_ now?"

She refills her glass, and vodka breaches the rim in a thin, translucent vein. Steve's eyes scratch the alcohol with stifling hunger. How he wishes he could get drunk again.

"You be happy. You take Bucky back to New York and you live life to the fullest."

He balks at her bold indifference. "Natasha, Peggy just –"

"I _know_," she snaps, then softens. "I know, Steve. I'm not saying right away. Not even in a month from now. You take the time you need. But you don't slam the doors on the people who care about you. You let them in."

He sighs long and hard, until his breath collects on the glass. "I know."

"Good. Then please do that this time."

"I love Bucky, y'know. I do." He stares the side of her face until she looks over at him. "If you're implying I don't, or if I –"

"Then let him in." Her tone is solid, with no room for argument.

"I'm trying. It's just...too…"

"New."

"Yeah."

"Steve," she sighs, "stop holding yourself back. Be bold. Be risky. Take it from me – live recklessly."

"I'm not brave like you, Natasha."

"You threw your body on what you thought was a live grenade, and you jump out of airplanes without parachutes regularly. You let the Winter Soldier, the world's deadliest assassin, accost you with his bare hands, unresisting, because you thought there was a _chance_ you could undo fifty years of brainwashing. You're brave, Steve."

Steve isn't sure how he's going to respond, either because then Natasha adds, "And don't tell me for a second that Peggy didn't think so, too."

And isn't _that_ the truth.

* * *

It takes a few days. Then, at the hotel room, around midnight, Bucky's in the bathroom when Steve unexpectedly bursts into tears – loud, wailing sobs that have him wetly gasping for breath.

After Bucky fell off the train, Steve was numb for the rest of the day, but he had cried right then, seconds after watching Bucky's body plummet toward the treacherous snow floor. As the train had vanished into a tunnel, he had nearly been sobbing, his head buried in his arm.

Hearing the voicemail – David's choked, broken voice – Steve hadn't even responded, and he knows this is it: these tears are old and have been pressing to come out, aching for it. They make his body buckle and his actually chest hurt.

_Heartache._

"Hey, hey." Steve can't see Bucky's hands through the tears but he feels them, warm and rough on his face. "Shhh, Steve –"

"_I can't do it_," he wheezes. The words suddenly rush forward, water freed of its dam. "Bucky – I can't – _Ilovedher I loved her, how do you just _– _walk away? How?_"

Bucky strokes the side of his head. "I know you did, Steve."

Steve chokes a little, shaking hard, and Bucky's weight moves over him. Onto him. "Shh," Bucky repeats, closer, "it's okay." His lips nudge Steve's. "It's okay."

Steve obliges him. Bucky's tongue is gentle as it slides into Steve's grief-slick mouth, but the intimacy is too stark. Too raw, and Steve lays a hand on Bucky's chest.

Bucky, not understanding, leans in further.

"Buck," Steve murmurs between their lips.

"You don't have to be alone," Bucky whispers. Steve looks up, at last able to see Bucky in his lap. "Okay?"

Bucky's eyes are wet. Like his.

"I don't know," Steve breathes. "I'm not –" _Not right now_, is what he means. But Bucky's desperate above him; his desire is like heat. It's on his skin. Steve can feel it.

_Natasha says, "Then let him in."_

"I loved her," he says instead, feebly.

"She loved you, too – and she was proud of you, Steve," Bucky says gently. "She had every reason to be."

Steve, too tired for it all, sinks against Bucky's bare chest. The tags gently press against his cheek, and Bucky kisses the crown of his head.

"She believed in me," Steve whispers. "After Erskine died, she...she was there for me." Bucky idly runs his hands down Steve's back, letting him talk. "Sometimes – sometimes, I think the two of you were my only friends."

"You know that's not true, Steve."

It's not, but sadness changes the chemistry of his tongue. Grief scribbles over his thoughts.

"I'm sorry."

"You have no reason to be."

"I'm so glad – I found the two of you again," Steve says, voice breaking up suddenly. Like his body can't bear the weight. "I just wish…" Miserably, he laughs. "Well."

Bucky kisses his forehead. "I know."

Steve falters for a moment, lulled by the rhythm of Bucky's heart. All those nights, lying awake with his head where it is now – Bucky's life in his ear. Like a hand on a drum.

"What's wrong with you?" he murmurs.

"Hmm?"

"After everything, you still –"

"Don't start."

Steve just scoffs. "You're crazy."

"Probably."

"We can't just sit here," he says – mostly because it's something to say. Bucky just laughs softly, into Steve's hair, where he's laying his cheek.

They don't talk much after that; the only sound the whir of the prosthesis' gears as Bucky strokes Steve's face, his shoulders, his back. Then, Bucky tips his chin up and kisses him right beneath his eyes, on the drying patches of tears.

They could sit here forever.

* * *

When they were younger, Bucky kept a picture of his birth parents tucked in the pocket of his jacket: his mother was beautiful, almost unnaturally so. Like royalty.

"Look, Buck," Steve says, eight years old and lying in the grass at Central Park. A bike bell trills as a paperboy passes. "You have his nose."

"What?" Bucky screws up his face – already pretty at nine. "No, I don't. His nose is fat."

"Yeah-huh!" Steve pinches Bucky's nose. "There's no difference."

"Quit it," Bucky whines, pawing the picture out of Steve's hands. "'Sides, you're gonna rip it."

Steve laughs, until he notices how tentatively Bucky handles the photo. Like it's a precious jewel.

"You look like your mom," he tells him.

"Really?" Sunlight winks in and out of the waves of Bucky's eyes.

"Yeah. She's really pretty."

"Ew, don't say that."

Steve rolls his eyes, smiling.

"She was a movie star for a little while, I think," Bucky continues. He gazes at the picture for a long while, then decides, "I'm not as pretty as her."

But he is. Prettier, even. His mother is fine-boned and petite with a thick crop of dark hair, and even in the black-and-white still, she has a glow. She isn't smiling, but Steve imagines it's beautiful. He imagines it beams like a spotlight. Like Bucky's.

He got his eyes from his father. His mother's are small, black pinholes.

Growing up, even after he managed to hold down steady jobs, Bucky was always dirty: he cared little for cleaning his clothes and sometimes wore the same dirty button-up beneath his suspenders for four or five days. He wore hand-me-down pants that was often too short, hovering around his scratched calves and mailpost ankles and soiled socks. Like Steve, he was always bruised or tired or split-lipped or greasy, but the similarities ended there, because it was a look Bucky wore well. Steve had spent their childhood in envy, and much of their adolescence in paralyzing fear, of his best friend's good lucks – how it was impossible to compete. Bucky's beauty was effortless and breathless and endless; Steve was a glass of room temperature water next to an inferno.

When Bucky lost his virginity at sixteen, and Steve's sexual experiences ended at holding hands with Darcy Wilkins for a class field trip in the fifth grade, he didn't expect much. He grew content – comfortable, almost – with the idea of being alone. Bucky would grow up and find a wife and Steve would visit on Wednesday afternoons and weekends for dinner and casual conversation. There would be three children: two girls and a boy. Bucky would name one of the girls Norma, the name he'd always imagined was his real mother's, and joke about how his son looked just like Steve. Steve would shove him and tell him to fuck off through a grin. It was a nice life. Then Erskine asked him if he wanted to kill Nazis.

After he became Captain America, Steve was convinced he could handle the strength. What he didn't expect was how women were suddenly noticing him – _talking_ to him even, on their own free will. He'd be standing beside Bucky at base, hovering over a map of the front or joking over beers, and women's eyes secured onto him and only him, and Steve realized that Bucky calling him "handsome" hadn't been a joke at all. That his body had been his betrayer, not his face. He'd spend many nights gazing into scratched pocket mirrors and pools of water, rubbing his jaw and searching his own face for clues. How nice his eyes were, and his lips. His nose.

"I told you," Bucky would say with an emphatic grin, and Steve grew so comfortable with his own mouth, his own expression. He would mirror that smile as much as he could. He would look people in the eyes more and stay there.

One night, not long before the train, Peggy had made an offhand comment about Steve's eyes. "Isn't it _interesting_? How some blue eyes are so pleasant to look at, and others are creepy?"

Of course, she'd had a few.

"Like yours, Steve," she'd hiccupped, smiling at him, and with her flushed cheeks and deep, twinkling eyes, she was the prettiest thing Steve had ever seen. "Like yours. Yours are gorgeous."

"Oh." Still new to it all, he could only warm a little. "Thank you, Peggy."

"Always told that kid he was handsome," Bucky offered, sucking down a shot of Bourbon. It was one of the few times Steve witnessed Peggy smile at him. "He just never listened."

"Steve," she called, "you're a very handsome man."

"Very," Bucky said, and Steve must have been red because the two of them laughed. It was the best night of Steve's life. They lifted him up, believed in him, when no one else would.

They were the loves of Steve's life, too, and now, any and every memory of them makes him want to tear out his own throat.

* * *

In the morning, Steve asks Bucky about that night.

"I...some of it," Bucky offers. "I remember how _pink_ you got when we called you handsome."

Steve's smile barely brushes his eyes. "I figured that would stick."

"Shit," Bucky mutters suddenly, in understanding, as his gaze travels Steve's face. "Shit. I'm so sorry, Steve."

Steve had cried in his sleep last night.

"It's okay," he says gently, rising from the bed. "But I need you to remember that." There's a pen and pad of paper on the desk; he takes them both. "It's important."

Bucky tenderly looks up into his eyes. "Okay. I promise, Steve."

"Thank you."

As Bucky's writing, the words spill out again: "She used to talk about how you were the most beautiful man she'd ever seen."

"Really?"

"_Oh_ yeah." The pen continues to scratch, but Bucky's mouth punches in at the corner with a smirk. "Admittedly? Was kinda jealous for a while."

"Why?" Steve scoffs. "Because someone else was getting all the attention for a change?"

"No. Because I hadn't thought of telling you that first."

Steve opens his mouth, but then Bucky shoots him a dazzling smile and Steve can only laugh, long and hard and a little hurt, savoring every moment he has with his best friend. Vowing to never forget how precious they are.

He'd made that mistake once.

* * *

The week they spend in Boston is a quiet one. Their last night is the only one they actually go out; Steve sleeps quite a bit, but his eyes remain mostly dry. He talks to Bucky. They order room service and stay up until two in the morning watching shitty movies on cable. To Steve, it's heaven.

The last day is a Friday, and the entire city bustles with traffic, both foot and vehicular. One family hails them on their way back from dinner – they have a little girl who glows when she spots Steve.

"Mommy, it's Captain America!"

Bucky smirks at Steve. "Wow. You're practically famous."

Steve just rolls his eyes, posing for a few pictures. The girl's timid at first, until he hoists her up against his hip and she squeals. Her parents laugh out loud as they capture the moment.

"Can you sign my teddy?" she asks as he sets her down.

He smiles. "Sure."

"Don't tell anyone," Bucky whispers to her while Steve scribbles his signature on the bear's white velvet fur, "but I have a huge crush on Captain America."

"Really?" the girl chirps, her eyes bright. "Me, too!"

They both giggle like they're sharing a secret, and Steve has never been happier in his life.

"Cute kid," Bucky remarks as she runs back to her parents. They smile amicably their way. "I've always wanted a daughter."

"Me, too." They round the corner, headed for the bar on the hotel's block. "Two daughters and a son, right?"

Bucky blinks in surprise. "Holy shit," he laughs. "How did you _remember_ that? I only mentioned that like..._once_."

Steve shrugs, reaching to open the door. "Good memory, I guess."

"Pretty damn good for a ninety-six year old, I'd say."

They sneer playfully at each other. Bucky bumps his shoulder against Steve's as he goes into the bar.

"Captain!" the bartender crows – an older man, graying at his temples, with both arms fully-sleeved in ink. "The usual?"

Steve laughs. "If ice water could be considered a 'usual.'"

They get onto the barstools. "Grey Goose for me, if you don't mind," Bucky says.

"You got it, champ." Fishing the bottle from the shelf, the man looks over his shoulder at Bucky. "I trust you're over twenty-one?"

"I'm actually ninety-seven," Bucky replies. "Don't get wise with me, young man."

The bartender lifts his brows, then laughs, deep and hearty.

"Ah," Bucky intones as the glass is set before him. "You look so good, sweetheart."

Steve feels his hand curl tighter around his mug as Bucky lines up a shot. There are very few things Bucky doesn't look good doing – this is probably the worst.

"I'd offer you some," he jokes, ignorant of how tense Steve is, "but I know you can't –"

"I hate it when you drink," Steve blurts. Bucky opens his mouth, but Steve cuts him off, because if he stops now, he'll never be able to start again. "I hate it when you get like this – when you force me to make choices. I hate that you know what you want when I don't. I wish I could be like you Buck but..._Christ_, I need _time_. I hate that you corner me. I hate that I don't know how to talk to you sometimes, because sometimes I think you're a totally different person, but I hate it even more that that's just not true. I hate that this was a long time coming and neither of us knew what to say. I hate that I have to make things so damn complicated. I hate that I've hurt you."

Bucky stares at Steve – left winded by his confession – with the vodka poised in front of his lips. It's unspoken, but clear: if he drinks it, there's nothing left to say between them. If he sets it down, they can breathe again.

The tension is a tight wire that threatens to slice Steve open. All around them, the bar filters softly with EDM and light conversation.

"You know what?" Bucky asks after a long while. Steve holds his breath, until Bucky smiles at him. "I just realized I _do_ kinda hate this shit."

Steve, unsure of what he can even say at this point, just laughs. And God – it's enough.

* * *

When they go back to New York, Natasha hugs him goodbye for the first time ever at the airport terminal.

He's a little shocked by it – more than a little shocked; he's only ever seen her hug Clint – and she must sense it, because she laughs somewhere near his armpit as he sloppily rushes to return her embrace. She feels so tiny in his arms, standing a full nine inches shorter than him, and he realizes why she's reluctant to hug people. It's hard to be scared of someone whose head you can rest your chin on.

"Proud of you," she murmurs.

"Thank you, Natasha."

She moves to hug Bucky, too, and he exaggerates a broad grin as he accepts her into his arms. "I understand this is like a privilege," he remarks, and Steve hears her muffled laugh as Bucky gives her a squeeze.

Coulson poses as her driver out at the loading zone, standing dutifully beside a Lincoln Town Car with her suitcase; he has a driver's cap pulled low over his eyes and a huge pair of shades on. He nods to Steve and Bucky as they climb into the back, only breaking character when Bucky folds a ten into his palm.

"My good man," he says in a deep, solemn voice. Coulson cracks a smile.

"Don't get used to it."

Bucky shuts the door. "Man," he says to Steve, "I _like_ that guy."

Up front, Natasha grins into the rearview. "Who doesn't?"

* * *

The first thing they do is go to a meeting. They don't even unpack their suitcases; they sleep in their clothes and shoes on top of the comforter that night, and are up at nine-thirty to head to the church.

Steve volunteers to speak first, and he has never felt more powerful as chairs squeak to turn to him.

"One of my closest friends died last week."

There's a ripple of sympathy in their faces, even for a crowd that's used to death. He appreciates that.

"One of the founding members of SHIELD – Peggy Carter. She was old, but...it still…"

"Oh Steve," Dee says. "We're so sorry."

"Thank you," he says quietly.

After, Sam pulls him aside. "I'm proud of you for talking about it."

"God," Steve says, laughing. "I'm that bad, huh?"

Sam grins. "You can be."

Steve looks toward Bucky, who throws back his head and laughs at something Josiah says, and Sam catches him looking.

"She also knew you were a stubborn son of a bitch."

"Shut up, Sam."

"Look me in the eye and tell me she didn't get on your case about Bucky, too."

Steve just keeps staring; sunlight spills down Bucky's front like a cascade of water. Like gold.

"That's what I thought."

"Shut up."

"Oh dude," Sam laughs, "you're so gone."

Bucky turns then and, meeting Steve's eye, smiles warmly.

"Yeah," he manages. Sam just cracks up harder.

* * *

After lunch, he grabs Bucky's hand as they walk home. Bucky flushes a pleasant shade of pink, and Steve loudly announces that this is the first time that he's seen _Bucky Barnes actually _blush_, someone mark the date and time_. Bucky tells him to shut up, but his smile could not get bigger.

At home, while Bucky showers, Steve finds a thick manila envelope he did not take with him to Boston, slipped beneath his clothes. STEVE is printed in block letters.

_Natasha_, he immediately thinks. And he's not wrong: she's left him a letter inside on the hotel stationary, on top of a moleskine.

_David asked me to give this to you. He wasn't sure how to do it himself...if he means you're intimidating or difficult to approach. I'll assume the latter._

He smiles gently.

_I haven't opened it, but he told me it was Peggy's. She kept a journal after he and his older brother went to war. Apparently your name came up a few times. He said she'd want you to have it._

Her journal. This is Peggy's journal.

Steve sucks in a breath, shakily thumbing open the musty cover. The pages and yellowed and frail beneath his fingers; he feels like he's handling a butterfly's wing as he reads.

Only half of the notebook is filled, each entry dated, from '69 to '75, but her handwriting is small and compact, history in tight cursive. Some of the entries are mundane – _Lucas called. Things are good _– and others are haunting – _At night, sometimes my chest gets so tight, I truly believe I can't breathe. I don't tell Alistair. I don't tell anyone. There's a hole that's been ripped from me and it's halfway across the world _– and others aren't even about her sons, or Alistair, or even her. They're tangents, railroad tracks, that veer off course. Things about Peggy he never knew.

June 17, 1971: _The war makes me think of Steve, which upsets me to no end. The thing that instantly makes me think of him is bloodshed and violence. I hate it._

January 22, 1972: _I miss Steve so much. He would know what to do._

August 8, 1972: _They want to open a memorial for Steve after the war is over. It's costing so much money to fight, it could take decades, they said. I don't care; I told them SHIELD could fund it, if that's what it takes._

A tear breaks off from the tip of Steve's nose, but he moves the notebook aside so the delicate paper can't catch it. He wipes his eyes, the tears smearing wetly on his fingers.

But it feels good to cry. Freeing. These are things he needed to know.

The shower squeaks off. "Steve?"

"Y-yeah?" he answers, grateful that the distant disguises his broken voice.

"I'm gonna shave."

"Okay."

The door clicks shut, and the sink starts running a moment later. Steve goes back to reading.

The last entry is the shortest one. It's sloppy, as if written in a hurry, and the ink was smeared before it dried: _The war is over. We lost._

Peggy's oldest son, Lucas, died in the war. Steve can feel her pain radiating off the page, a ghost living in paper for forty years. Six words that rest like a heavy weight on his chest.

Steve moves to close the notebook, breath shuddering sorrowfully, when he notices something. The next page over, slightly exposed by the arch of the paper under his thumb. Something's written there.

2008: _They said my handwriting won't exist in about three years. _

_David, when you find this book, give it to him, and tell him to learn from it._

_You'll like him. He's a good man.  
_

Then, below it, another. This entry is dated 2011. The handwriting is almost illegible.

_They found Steve._

He stares at it. The corner of the period – too big to fit the sloppy letters, as if she dug the pen into the paper – bleeds slightly and ripples, as if it had been wet. From a tear.

From her.

It doesn't take long for him to start sobbing.

* * *

"Steve?"

Bucky's voice.

Steve cranes his head up from the edge of the bed, where he's still hunched over. Bucky stands in the doorway of the room, a towel around his waist and his face freshly shaved. Water still drips from his hair.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." He dabs his nose on the back of his arm. "Sorry."

Bucky glances at the notebook, but doesn't ask.

"I just...I was thinking. And…"

"Yeah?"

"Well. I think I know what I want now," he says.

Bucky smiles lovingly. "'Bout time."

**end**

* * *

**A/N**: First of all, there'll be an epilogue (and no, nothing horrible and gut-wrenching will happen, I PROMISE THE HAPPINESS IS PERMANENT). And, second all, thank you guys _so_ much for sticking around for this wild ride. I'm honestly really curious about Peggy's mortality in MCU; she's not exactly young anymore; I know Steve's not exactly weighed down or trapped by his past, but Peggy and Bucky are basically the only living physical remnants of his pre-thawed life, with only Peggy's body remaining loyal to her age, and it'll be interesting if they choose to address her age in Cap 3, or at all in the films. _Anyways_, I hope you guys enjoyed. :) This has definitely been a roller coaster both to write and to experience. Thank you all so, so much.


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